on the financial news this morning

Recipe

You have to be stubborn.
You have to turn away
from meditation, from ideologies,
from the tombstone face
of the Royal Bank of Scotland.

You have to keep stubbornly saying
This is bread, though it’s in a sunset,
this is a sunset with bread in it.
This is a woman, she doesn’t live
In a book or an imagination.
Hello, water, you must say, Hello
Good water.

You have to touch wood, but not for luck.
You have to listen to that matter of pitches and crescendos
without thinking Beethoven is speaking
only for you
And you must learn there are words
with no meaning, words like consolation
words like goodbye.

Norman McCaig