Dear Senior Management Team,
this dry New Economic Territory
of which you always seem to speak
appears to me devoid of words I love –
no Fraxinus excelsior, no fritillaries, or foxgloves…
Each day I wander into it
wearing my new gabardine,
Sou’wester and galoshes
to slew away your rain of acronyms –
H.E.F.C.E, R.E.F, S.S.L.C –
it makes me want to find the hidden tarn
in the corries, where the language I dream
lies in wait, like coelacanths and plesiosaurs;
it makes me want to let the language
lumber out of the primitive swamp
made up of P.D.Ps and S.S.Rs
to slide itself up evolution’s double helix,
letting axolotls, hummingbirds, leaf-nosed bats
assume their rightful, gaudy place
beyond the limits of your
prolix, Precambrian world.
Andy Brown
illustration Nick Victor