25 AUGUST 1990, Page 24

Nature

The only thing in the world, apart from God, that matters Is money. Not the accumulation or the gaining but The possession of it. Only then can we examine the world.

There remains the problem of those who have none, Or not enough, who surround us (should we have some).

These it is difficult not to resent, and then there is God On his only recorded appearance who was hot Against having or thinking about it; also against resentment.

This is a puzzle: for when we study the blackbird And muse on its life and our own, such leisure Costs money, which it is dangerous to have and not To have is measurably worse, so that envy Of everywhere — blackbirds, impertinent, watching us, turns To a mixed sort of sorrow when innocent unmoneyed life Ends in the jaws of the cat and no more songs for that one.

P. J. Kavanagh