Money

An introductory lecture

This morning we shall spend a few minutes

Upon the study of symbolism, which is basic

To the nature of money. I show you this nickel.

Icons and cryptograms are written all over

The nickel: one side shows a hunchbacked bison

Bending his head and curling his tail to accommodate

The circular nature of money. Over him arches

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, and, squinched in

Between that and his rump, E PLURIBUS UNUM,

A Roman reminiscence that appears to mean

An indeterminately large number of things

All of which are the same. Under the bison

A straight line giving him a ground to stand on

Reads FIVE CENTS. And on the other side of our nickel

There is the profile of a man with long hair

And a couple of feathers in the hair; we know

Somehow that he is an American Indian, and

He wears the number nineteen-thirty-six.

Right in front of his eyes the word LIBERTY, bent

To conform with the curve of the rim, appears

To be falling out of the sky Y first; the Indian

Keeps his eyes downcast and does not notice this;

To notice it, indeed, would be shortsighted of him.

So much for the iconography of one of our nickels,

Which is now becoming a rarity and something of

A collectors’ item: for as a matter of fact

There is almost nothing you can buy with a nickel,

The representative American Indian was destroyed

A hundred years or so ago, and his descendants’

Relations with liberty are maintained with reservations,

Or primitive concentration camps; while the bison,

Except for a few examples kept in cages,

Is now extinct. Something like that, I think,

Is what Keats must have meant in his celebrated

Ode on a Grecian Urn.

Notice, in conclusion,

A number of circumstances sometimes overlooked

Even by experts: (a) Indian and bison,

Confined to obverse and reverse of the coin,

Can never see each other;  they are looking

In opposite directions, the bison past

The Indian’s feathers, the Indian past

The bison’s tail; (c) they are upside down

To one another; (d) the bison has a human face

Somewhat resembling that of Jupiter Ammon.

I hope that our studies today will have shown you

Something of the import of symbolism

With respect to the understanding of what is symbolized.

Howard Nemerov was born on February 29th, 1920 in New York. He died of cancer at his home in University City, Missouri on July 5th 1991.