
National Poetry Day: Futures in Finance
Futures in Finance
by Steve Griffiths
Shapes occur in this game
with no guiding hand to form them -
new behaviours and patterns
that morph and self-replicate.
Something’s knitting on its own:
simple action into unpredictable
complexity, breeding an impetus
more powerful than anything
you could intend.
The ripple has its end
beyond imagined competence;
where unrestrained
the market’s every variable
multiplies accident,
homelessness, mortality
premature, humiliated,
power concentrated
in the random hand,
responsibility diminished
among levers where things
grow collateral:
we obey, conform, condemn
where the personal
bond is broken,
go with the flow
to the new new.
With most of us outliers
then the centre should not hold –
but if we’re marginal
to the journey of the complex
instruments, what then
in the remote zones of cold
where everyone’s bewildered,
democracy unfit
for the hard-faced purpose,
a skill through a failing of our own
snatched from us?