This poem is taken from PN Review 77, Volume 17 Number 3, January - February 1991.

Five Poems on the Economics of the Eumenides

George Barker

I

Flagellants of those guardians who attend me,
in spite of your bile and bitterness and your wholly
inhuman passion for needling those who need you,
when will you see that Venus is always the pay day
of every uncharitable week? Acknowledging the
   exemplary
emptiness of your soul, the absolute zero of
your response to the numerology of our need,
why do you seek to prove that therefore Glastonbury
Abbey was never rebuilt? When the solicitors come
with their sweet smelling secretaries and documents
  attesting
that they seek only to serve our purposes, why,
my dear female christs do you instantly take up an
eighteen foot zjambok? Who are you then? Moneta?
Look down on us from the altitudes of your
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