A Poem from St. John’s, Newfoundland William Baker :CRA SOTW
Alan Baggett
A poem from Revenue Canada: so light, so bright, so clear in da light
By William Thomas, All the World's a Circus
Jan 18, 2008
This morning in my mail, I received an official looking letter from
the Canada Revenue Agency in St. John's, Newfoundland. It's a three-
page document, two by way of explanation, the first and most important
page, a notice. Oh, I know this page is important because it's from
William V. Baker himself, Commissioner of Revenue for the Government
of Canada. In the upper right corner appears my GST number, date of
mailing and period covered by this brief but urgent account. And there
it is in black and white, headed--THE REPORT NOTICE OF (RE)ASSESSMENT--
GOODS AND SERVICES TAX/HARMONIZED SALES TAX (GST/HST). RESULTS. Quote:
"This notice explains the results of our (re)assessment of the GST/HST
return(s) received on October 31, 2007 for the period indicated
above." Now government directives seldom take my breath but . . . .
RESULT OF THIS (RE)ASSESSMENT $0.00
PRIOR BALANCE $0.00
TOTAL BALANCE $0.00
Wow! William V. Baker, oh how you harmonize, sympathize and
meticulously tally. The (re)assessment result dovetailed perfectly
with the prior balance and together like a Celtic harp beside a player
piano, they performed in total balance to produce the exact same
electrifying results as each of them did on their own.
Mr. Baker you proved without a shadow of a doubt that the strength of
the syncopated whole is way, way more equal than the sum of its
symphonic parts. The ingenious way you have arranged this seamless
piece of precision--zero, zero and many more zeroes--it makes my tax-
paying heart strings sing. And with that doubly reinforced whole of
numbers, the result impersonating the prior, you magically created
nine holes --a golf course of empty cups that runneth over with
vacantness, a plethora of perfect zeroes.
A penny for your thoughts, or God forbid, my GST and what have we? A
fallacy: result $0.01 plus prior balance $0.00 would equal a total
balance of $0.01. The perfect score's been scorched, the unparalleled
poem paralyzed, a perfectly pompous ass appears where but for a single
cent, the immaculate (re)assessment reigned, only moments before.
Mr. William V. Baker, you sir, are the maestro of money, the grand
tender of the tax dollar, the witty and brawny bard of groaning
blanks.
A great risk of issuing praise too faint, witness encore what you
wrought so eloquently there in that Notice of (Re)Assessment. You took
six barren, but essential, ingredients -- nil, nil and another nil
doubled them with care and infused them with two-digit decimal coinage
and what did you in your calculating oven of evolution produce?
What indeed -- a soufflé so light, so lean, so enumeratingly keen that
even a celebrity chef like Wolfgang puck would truck no expert
criticism. A thing of beauty that digitless dish you cooked up without
rice, a spice or the roll of the dice. Neither the head nor tail of
either a loonie or a twoonie was thrown willy-nilly into this heady
mix.
Think about that -- how the untimely intrusion of just a one dollar
Loon--tough, stringy meat I am told, and what behold do we have?
Result $0.00. Prior balance $1.00. Total balance, a 100 per cent
disaster without that poor little "per." That is what we have;
disharmony in numbers, incongruity of design, a bad apple in the
barrel of blanks, a lonely black over-the-shoulder lash in an
otherwise strapless bra in white .
For if you add a number, Sir, any number, English spelled as Roman
numeralled -- a number that came by chance or artificially enhanced by
Barry, Ben and Jerry too -- what of that exquisite equation of yours,
then?
What ho? JayLo! Then the circle is not a perfect square, the square,
albeit unfair, laid bare. Then the pi of anything but your divine
(re)assessment design is a pie to the face of every manipulator of
numbers less talented than thee.
Indeed, add a number to that notice of sweet and even nothingness
which you prepared and repaired, kneaded and knotted and carefully
plotted and what we have then is nothing less than McArthur Park
melting in the dark, with all that greenback icing flowing down
because some ingrate put a number in my (re)assessment recipe. Then
someone left the notice out in the rain. I don't think that I can
take, I don't think you'll ever shake it 'cause it took so long to
bake it and we'll never have that (re)assessment notice again. Oh,
no!
And should this proclamation of numismatic oblivion be sent to a
million or two or even 10 million Canadians in three sacred sheets and
a pre-processed envelope, may the trees felled to produce the paper be
old growth, Redwood and pine.
No, I shall not keep this notice for my records for this is the record
of all notices, brevity taxing the soul of wit, its awesome simplicity
cutting through the clouds that hid the sun and sent unadorned
creativity to hide in the bosom of the ocean below.
Being but a mortal man, I kneel at the (re)assessment altar of your
power to the ninth degree and as humble as is possible, me to you,
human to god and guru too, I beseech you Sir, alas: "Like I don't owe
you any money? Right?"
William Thomas can be reached through his website at www.williamthomas.ca.
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