Yesterday was Poetry Day. My partner is Finance Director of the Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse, and she wanted a poem for the organisation’s internal newsletter that reflected on both theatre and finance. Apparently there’s not a lot out there, and so mild desperation led her to me. I’m not a poet, but hey, whatever. I’m a hack and it’s almost, but not quite, still poetry day.
Here’s my fifteen minute poem about accountancy and theatre:
Accountant for the stage
For years I have accounted for the stage
And as I summed, I think, I sometimes failed to see
That in its harrows, humours, fears and rage
It was out there, in the dark of night, accounting for me.
We watch hearts and cities sacked,
The muddying of the pure
And for a while it seems nothing broken in the second act
The third can ever cure.
But in this room I’ve seen columns fall
To chaos and dismay
Then found a key in word or call
And made good at close of play.
So play on out the cries, the shouts, the long and anguished looks
And think of me here too at night, balancing the books.
