1929: Stockbroker’s Lament

After all the partying,
the exuberance, the Stutz
and the backroom booze,
the easy money, the luck;

after all that, what I’m left with
is the best blessing of the modern age:
that we built these buildings high enough
to make the flight I’m about to take

certainly fatal.  When I fall,
it may be that I will become
warning to those who come
after: don’t ever do this again.  Make certain

that those who make the money
keep the money.  Make certain that
we are safe from those we stole from
with promises and shell games,

and pad us well enough
so that if we fall we do not feel it.
Well enough that we will bounce.
Too late for me, of course — but 

get to work,
and make a world where them’s that got
shall fly if they fall, fly over
those that have not, that never had.