Alf’s Sixth Bit - Ezra Pound

Let some new lying ass,
Who knows not what is or was,
Talk economics,
Pay for his witless noise,
Get the kid nice new toys,
Call him 'professor'.

Lies from the specialist
Give t'old ones a newer twist
Harder to untie.
Here comes the hired gang
Blood on each tired fang
Covered with lip-stick.

'Oh, what a charming man,'
That's how the press blurb ran,
'Professor K s is.'
Now they can't fire him.
NO! they won't hire him.
Still Dr. S 's
Not tied to the ring around,
Not quite snowed under.

Being a physicist
They can't quite bribe him:
Oh, what a noise they made
Those parliamentarians.

Oh what a fuss they made
Stirring the marmalade
These parliamentarians
Never an honest word
In their dim halls was heard
For more than a decade.


Ezra Pound

Alf’s Seventh Bit - Ezra Pound

Did I 'ear it 'arf in a doze:
The Co-ops was a goin' somewhere,
Did I 'ear it while pickin' 'ops;
How they better start takin' care,

That the papers were gettin' together
And the larger stores were likewise
Considering something that would, as you
Might say, be a surprise

To the Co-ops, a echo or somethin'?
They tell me that branded goods
Don't get a discount like Mr. Selfridge
Of 25 per cent, on their ads., and the woods

Is where the Co-ops are goin' to,
And that Oxford Street site
Is not suited to co-operation
A sort of'Arab's dream in the night.

''We have plenty, so let it be.'
The example of these consumers in co-operation
Might cause thought and be therefore
A peril to Selfridge and the nation.


Ezra Pound

Alf’s Second Bit - Ezra Pound

THE NEO-COMMUNE

Manhood of England,
Dougth of the Shires,
Want Russia to save 'em
And answer their prayers.
Want Russia to save 'em,
Lenin to save 'em, Trotsky to save 'em
(And valets to shave 'em)
The youth of the Shires!

Down there in Cambridge
Between auction and plain bridge,
Romance, revolution 1918!
An idea between 'em
I says! 'ave you seen 'em?
The flower of Cambridge,
The youth of the Shires?


Ezra Pound

Alf’s Ninth Bit - Ezra Pound

Listen, my children, and you shall hear
The midnight activities of Whats-his Name,
Scarcely a general now known to fame
Can tell you of that famous day and year.

When feeble Mr. Asquith, getting old,
The destinies of England were almost sold
To a Welsh shifter with an ogling eye,
And Whats-his-name attained nobility.

The Dashing Rupert of the pulping trade,
Rough from the virgin forests inviolate,
Thus rose in Albion, and tickled the State
And where he once set foot, right there he stayed.

Old 'Erb was doting, so the rumour ran,
Ahd Rupert ran the rumour round in wheels,
And David's harp let out heart-rending squeals:
'Find us a harpist ! ! DAVID is the man!!'

Dave was the man to sell the shot and shell,
And Basil was the Greek that rode around
On sea and land, with all convenience found
To sell, to sell, to sell, that's it, to SELL

Destroyers, bombs and spitting mitrailleuses.
He used to lunch with Balfour in those days
And if the papers seldom sang his praise,
The simple Britons never knew he was,

Until a narsty German told them so.
Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of things that happened very long ago,
And scarcely heed one word of what you hear.

Bury it all, bury it all well deep,
And let the blighters start it all over again.
They'll trick you again and again, as you sleep;
But you shall know that these were the men,


Ezra Pound

Alf’s Fourth Bit - Ezra Pound

Rudyard the dud yard,
Rudyard the false measure,
Told 'em that glory
Ain't always a pleasure,
But said it wuz glorious nevertheless
To lick the boots of the bloke
That makes the worst mess.

Keep up the grand system
Don't tell what you know,
Your grandad got the rough edge.
Ain't it always been so ?
Your own ma' warn't no better
Than the Duchess of Kaugh.
My cousin's named Baldwin
An' 'e looks like a tofft

You 'ark to the sargent,
And don't read no books;
Go to God like a sojer;
What counts is the looks.


Ezra Pound

Alf’s Fifth Bit - Ezra Pound

The pomps of butchery, financial power,
Told 'em to die in war, and then to save,
Then cut their saving to the half or lower;
When will this system lie down in its grave?

The pomps of Fleet St., festering year on year,
Hid truth and lied, and lied and hid the facts.
The pimps of Whitehall ever more in fear,
Hid health statistics, dodged the Labour Acts.

All drew their pay, and as the pay grew less,
The money rotten and more rotten yet,
Hid more statistics, more feared to confess
C.3, C.4, 'twere better to forget

How many weak of mind, how much tuberculosis
Filled the back alleys and the back to back houses.
'The medical report this week discloses . . .'
'Time for that question!' Front Bench interposes.

Time for that question? and the time is NOW.
Who ate the profits, and who locked 'em in
The unsafe safe, wherein all rots, and no man can say how
What was the nation's, now by Norman's kin
Is one day blown up large, the next, ducked in?


Ezra Pound