The rich were dull and they drank too much or they played too much backgammon. They were dull and they were repetitious. He remembered poor Julian and his romantic awe of them and how he had started a story once that began, “The very rich are different from you and me.” And how someone had said to Julian, “Yes, they have more money.”
—Ernest Hemingway, “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”
The rich are different from you and me.
Yes, they have more money, that’s true.
But think of the things that money brings:
Pleasure and comfort and something, too,
More special than those: the rich have time,
Time to read and write and rest,
Time to work (when they play at work),
Time, in short, to be their best.
The poor are different from us as well.
They have the work the rich avoid:
Toilets to clean and cars to fix
And children to watch. They stay employed
By wasting their time: no thoughts
Allowed, just pointless tasks.
Are they human beneath the weight of work?
Nobody knows because nobody asks.
Me, I live a middling life:
Middleclass and middle-aged.
I care for my children and clean the house.
I suppose I get to be half-engaged:
I write my poems and read my books;
I waste my greater time at work;
And if I am ever free in life,
It’s seen as a gratitude-laden perk.No posts