THE CONTINUING DELUGE

The votes are cast. The seven will become one and Ireland will have a new President. The campaign got dirty at the end as various occurrences in the pasts of the lead candidates flowed in complex torrents in the press and on the television. 

Once, for a dare, 

He filled his heart-shaped swimming pool 

With bank notes, high denomination, 

And fed a pound of caviar to his dog. 

The dog was sick; a chartered plane 

Flew in a replacement for the Persian rug.

Eighteen people were evacuated by boat from their homes in the village of Beragh, County Tyrone (54 degrees north, 7 degrees West) as a river burst its banks. Bailing out the banks (financial, not aqueous) flooded the political boats with Euro zone summits. 

He made a billion yen 

Leap from Tokyo to Buenos Aires, 

Turn somersaults through Brussels, 

New York, Sofia and Johannesburg. 

It cracked the bullion market open wide. 

An off-duty Garda officer was swept away in Wicklow (52 degrees North, 6 degrees West). A nurse was inundated in Dublin (53 degrees North, 6 degrees West). 

Some of them were dreamers 

And some of them were fools 

Who were making plans and thinking of the future 

Citizens drown and NAMA, the National Asset Management Agency in Ireland, agreed incentives, including salaries of  200, 000 euros a year, to encourage property developers to make debt repayments. 

Bailing out banks does not bring liquidity for citizens.

Some of them were angry 

At the way the earth was abused 

By the men who learned how to forge her beauty into power 

Parliamentarians in Italy engaged in fisticuffs in a battle for the financial lifeboats. They are going down perhaps, but fighting, even among themselves. 

Flood waters rose in Bangkok (13 degrees North, 100 degrees West). The EU appealed to China for a bail-out. The Tories in London (51 degrees North, 0 degrees East) re-launched their own canoes in Europe.

Water is a god 

That doles its favours by the drop, 

And waiting is a way of life. 

The clocks go back in Ireland.

Governments fell, coalitions cracked 

Insurrection raised its bloody flag 

From north to south. 

Round the decay of that colossal wreck, 

boundless and bare, 

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Before the Deluge; song lyric; Jackson Brown; 1979

After the Deluge; poem; Wole Soyinka; The Guardian; 2002

Ozymandias; poem; Percy Bysshe Shelly; 1792-1822