SSSR SSSR
the roads spring the rail warms SSSR
the train plunges toward tomorrow
SSSR ever faster SSSR
In four years the fiveyearplan
SSSR down with the exploiting of man by man
SSSR à bas l’ancien servage à bas le capital
à bas l’impérialisme à bas
SSSR SSSR SSSR
Ce qui grandit comme un cri dans les montagnes
Quand l’aigle frappé relâche soudainement ses serres
SSSR SSSR SSSR
C’est le chant de l’homme et son rire
C’est le train de l’étoile rouge
qui brûle les gares les signaux les airs
SSSR octobre c’est l’express
octobre à travers l’univers SS
SR SSSR SSSR
SSSR SSSR
—ARAGON.
SSSR down with the old bondage down with capital
down with imperialism down with it!
SSSR SSSR SSSR
That which swells like a cry in the mountains
When the stricken eagle suddenly lets go with its talons
SSSR SSSR SSSR
It’s the song of man and his laughter
It’s the train of the red star
which burns the stations the signals the skies
SSSR October October it’s the express
October across the universe SS
SR SSSR SSSR
SSSR SSSR
From Literature of the World Revolution, August 1931; also Contempo, February 1, 1933, and The Red Front (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: Contempo Publishers, 1933).
AND IT CAME TO PASS
SCENE: an eclipse. Enter President HOOSES, disguised as a wolf in sheep’s clothing, walking on water. Everything immediately gets very dark.
HOOSES (sheepishly): Suffer the microphone to come unto me. (A mike is suffered).—Be of good cheer; it is I. (Laughter). Woe unto you that laugh now! for you shall mourn and weep. (Mourning and weeping). Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith? Why reason ye, because ye have no bread? Man shall not live by bread alone. (Enter, disguised as himself, NORMAN THOMAS, asleep, wearing a halo). Get thee behind me, socialism, Are there not twelve hours in the day? He that hath cheeks to turn, let him turn. (Enter Governor BOOSEVELT, disguised as a sheep in wolf’s clothing, swimming in beer.)
BOOSEVELT (wolfishly): I am the light of the world.
A VOICE: Let’s go!
HOOSES: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they shall inherit the pot of gold at the end of every rainbow. Blessed are they that agitate, for they shall be clubbed. Blessed are the prosperous, for they shall be around the corner. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst, for they shall obtain unemployment. Blessed are the meek, for they shall be filled with hooey. Blessed are the bull and bear, for they shall lie down together. Blessed are the pieceworkers, for they shall be torn piecemeal. Blessed are they which are persecuted for bonus’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of tear gas.
A VOICE: We want Waters!
HOOSES: Love thine enemas. Bless them that goose you. (Offering a bayonet): Take, eat, this is my body.
NORMAN THOMAS (asleep): B-r-r-r . . .
HOOSES: And now to facts.—The trouble with trouble is, that trouble is troublesome. If trouble were not troublesome, we should not have troublous times. If we should not have troublous times, we did not need to worry. If we did not need to worry, our pockets were not so full.
THE GHOST OF GEORGE ABRAHAM: Full of what?
THE VOICE OF AL CAPONE: Neither do men put new wine in old bottles.
HOOSES: Full of hands. Our reconstruction program, involving as it does the unascertainable principle that a depression is the indirect result of direct economic causes, cannot but succeed in seriously mitigating a situation which would otherwise prove ambidextrous to every left-handed right-thinking moron. I therefore sacredly assert, on the one hand, that the time is now ripe for this great nation to evade an issue; and, on the other hand, as an immediate and an eventual solution of this vast country’s difficulties, I timidly and confidently propose to fill hands with work by emptying pockets of hands.
A VOICE: Burp.
BOOSEVELT (taking the mike): We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created people, and all people are created feeble, and all feeble are created minded, and all minded are created equal. And the sequel to equal being opportunity, it is obvious that opportunity knocks but once and then it boosts. Nothing can really be done unless you and me are willing to fearlessly confront one another with each other; believing, with the common man, that as long as people are men America is the land of opportunity. (Three Bronx cheers by a common man named Smith.)
THE GHOST OF JEFFERSON THOMAS: One card.
HOOSES (taking the mike): Verily, verily, I say unto you: the kingdom of Wall Street is like to a bottle of iodine, which a man took.
SOMEBODY (sotto voice): Thank god we had Bell-Ans!
HOOSES: Cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness. For unto everyone that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance; but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath. The foxes have nests and the birds have holes. By their fruits we shall know them. What therefore I have put together let no man join asunder. For there is nothing hid which shall not be manifested; neither was anything kept secret, but that it should come from abroad.
A VOICE: Kruger & Toll.
THE GHOST OF WASHINGTON LINCOLN: I pass.
BOOSEVELT (seizing the mike, shouts): Ladies and gentlemen of the invisible audience—follow me and I will make you stinking drunk! (Piously): Andrew Jackson who art in heaven, I take this country to be wringing wet. My party will, abolish the still, on election as it was in convention. Take us away our income tax, and forgive us our Judge Seaburys as we do not forgive our Mayor Walkers. And lead us right into the White House, and deliver to us boodle; do not even the republicans the same?
SOMEBODY: So what.
NORMAN THOMAS (drowsily): Verily, verily, verily, verily, verily, I say unto you: throw your vote away and follow me.
THE VOICE OF RUDY VALLEE: But you want lovin’ and I want love.
HOOSES (taking the mike): O faithless and perverse generation, the harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few. (To the ladies): Take heed that no man deceive you, for many shall come in my name. (To the children): Of such is the kingdom of Wall Street. (To the men): Except foolish virgins become as a camel entering a needle’s eye, ye positively shall not have a chicken in every garage. (A cock crows.) Amen. (Thunder and lightning.)
A VOICE (hysterical): Pigs is risen!
From Americana, November 1932.
BALLAD OF AN INTELLECTUAL
Listen, you morons great and small
to the tale of an intellectuall
(and if you don’t profit by his career
don’t ever say Hoover gave nobody beer).
’Tis frequently stated out where he was born
that a rose is as weak as its shortest thorn:
they spit like quarters and sleep in their boots
and anyone dies when somebody shoots
and the sheriff arrives after everyone’s went;
which isn’t, perhaps, an environment
where you would (and I should) expect to find
overwhelming devotion to things of the mind.
But when it rains chickens we’ll all catch larks
—to borrow a phrase from Karl the Marks.
As a child he was puny; shrank from noise,
hated the girls and mistrusted the boise,
didn’t like whisky, learned to spell
and generally seemed to be going to hell;
so his parents, encouraged by desperation,
gave him a classical education
(and went to sleep in their boots again
out in the land where women are main).
You know the rest: a critic of not
e,
a serious thinker, a lyrical pote,
lectured on Art from west to east
—did sass-seyeity fall for it? Cheast!
if a dowager balked at our hero’s verse
he’d knock her cold with a page from Jerse;
why, he used to say to his friends, he used
“for getting a debutante give me Prused”
and many’s the heiress who’s up and swooned
after one canto by Ezra Pooned
(or—to borrow a cadence from Karl the Marx—
a biting chipmunk never barx).
But every bathtub will have its gin
and one man’s sister’s another man’s sin
and a hand in the bush is a stitch in time
and Aint It All A Bloody Shime
and he suffered a fate which is worse than death
and I don’t allude to unpleasant breath.
Our blooming hero awoke, one day,
to find he had nothing whatever to say;
which I might interpret (just for fun)
as meaning the es of a be was dun
and I mightn’t think (and you mightn’t, too)
that a Five Year Plan’s worth a Gay Pay Oo
and both of us might irretrievably pause
e’er believing that Stalin is Santa Clause:
which happily proves that neither of us
is really an intellectual cus.
For what did our intellectual do,
when he found himself so empty and blo?
he pondered a while and he said, said he
“It’s the social system, it isn’t me!
Not I am a fake, but America’s phoney!
Not I am no artist, but Art’s boloney!
Or—briefly to paraphrase Karl the Marx—
‘The first law of nature is, trees will be parx.’ ”
Now all you morons of sundry classes
(who read the Times and who buy the Masses)
if you don’t profit by his career
don’t ever say Hoover gave nobody beer.
For whoso conniveth at Lenin his dream
shall dine upon bayonets, isn’t and seam
and a miss is as good as a mile is best
for if you’re not bourgeois you’re Eddie Gest
and wastelands live and waistlines deye,
which I very much hope it won’t happen to eye:
or as comrade Shakespeare remarked of old
All That Glisters Is Mike Gold
(but a rolling snowball gathers no sparks
—and the same holds true of Karl the Marks).
From Americana, December 1932.
WELIGION IS HASHISH
SCENE: Lenin’s Tomb, Moscow, U.S.S.R. Two immaculate soldiers face each other at the portal of portals.
Enter—very, very wearily—an incredibly dilapidated old man with unbelievably filthy whiskers: on his bent back lies an empty sack: he is feebly scratching himself with one hand and with the other is faintly tugging at a piece of string. Behind this spectre move jerkily in single file eight fleabitten motheaten perfectly woebegone tiny reindeer.
1ST SOLDIER (crisply): Halt!—who goes there?
BUM (shrilly): Lame and blind.
2ND SOLDIER: (crisply): Name and occupation.
BUM: A tempowawy guawdian of the etewnal fluid.
1ST SOLDIER: Advance and give the weflex.
BUM: A place fow evewything and evewything in its place.
2ND SOLDIER: Thank you, comwade.
BUM: Don’t mention it, comwade.
1ST SOLDIER: What is youw name, comwade?
BUM: Comwade Santa Claus, comwade.
2ND SOLDIER: Awe the eight othew comwades with you, comwade Santa Claus?
BUM: They awe, comwade.
1ST SOLDIER: In othew words you awe all togethew, comwade Santa Claus?
BUM: In othew words we awe all togethew, comwade.
2ND SOLDIER: Thank you, comwade.
BUM: Don’t mention it, comwade.
1ST SOLDIER: Awe you all togethew hewe incidentially ow on puwpose, comwade?
BUM: We awe all togethew on puwpose, comwade.
2ND SOLDIER: Sewiously, comwade?
BUM: Extwemly sewiously, comwade.
1ST SOLDIER: How sewiously, comwade?
BUM: Almost fatally, comwade.
2ND SOLDIER: Not weally, comwade!
BUM: Absolutely, comwade.
1ST SOLDIER: And what may youw puwpose be, comwade?
BUM: I’m looking fow something, comwade.
2ND SOLDIER: Something you lost, comwade?
BUM: Not exactly, comwade.
1ST SOLDIER: And what may you be looking fow, comwade?
BUM: I may be looking fow a woom and a bathos, comwade.
2ND SOLDIER: A woom and a bathos, comwade!
BUM: You heawd me, comwade.
1ST SOLDIER: You don’t mean one whole woom and one whole bathos, comwade?
BUM: Even so, comwade.
2ND SOLDIER: But thewe awe only nine of you altogethew, comwade!
BUM: What do you mean thewe awe only nine of me altogethew, comwade?
1ST SOLDIER: He means, comwade, that comwade Stalin has decweed that thewe must be no mowe wooms with or without bathos.
BUM: But I simply must have a bathos fow myself and a woom fow these othew comwades, comwade!
2ND SOLDIER: But don’t you see that we can’t any of us have wooms, comwade?
1ST SOLDIER: Ask comwade Stalin, comwade.
BUM: Whewe is comwade Stalin, comwade?
1ST SOLDIER: One moment, comwade. (Whispers, to 2ND SOLDIER): —Comwade Bunk!
2ND SOLDIER (Whispers, to 1ST): —Yes, comwade Baldewdash!
1ST SOLDIER:—Is comwade Stalin in his woom?
2ND SOLDIER: Don’t be silly!
1ST SOLDIER:—Is he in Comwade Lenin’s woom?
2ND SOLDIER:—Wath-ew.
1ST SOLDIER: Thank you, comwade Bunk!
2ND SOLDIER:—Don’t mention it, comwade Baldewdash!
1ST SOLDIER (to Bum): I’m sowwy, comwade Santa Claus, but comwades Stalin and Lenin awe in confewence. (The Tomb opens: emitting a thug.)
BOTH SOLDIERS: Good comwade mowning, comwade Stalin!
THUG: Good comwade mowning, comwades Bunk and Baldewdash!
BOTH SOLDIERS: Thewe’s a comwade hewe to see you, comwade Stalin!
THUG: A com—. (Catching sight of BUM, recoils . . . staring, panicstricken, seizes his head in both hands.)
BOTH (starting, trembling) SOLDIERS: W-w-what’s the mattew, comwade Stalin?
STALIN (impotently pointing to Santa Clause, cries out hysterically): —Marx!
From Americana, January 1933.
IN MEMORIAM
A roxy is a fabulous birdy. What is a fabulous birdy? An elephancy is not a fabulous birdy.
Fabulous is not big. Fabulous is not bigger. Fabulous is not biggest. Fabulous is bigger-than biggest.
Here is something else. You and I may ask the elephancy to perform a miracle. Any miracle will do. The elephancy looks very sad. The elephancy looks very sad because it must refuse. The elephancy must refuse because no elephancy can perform any miracle.
Now pay strict attention. You and I may not ask the roxy to perform a miracle. Only a roxyfeller may do that. When a roxyfeller asks a roxy, the roxy does not look very sad. The roxy does not look very sad because the roxy can perform any miracle which the roxyfeller asks it to perform. It is a fabulous bird.
Birdies lay eggs. Ordinary birdies lay ordinary eggs.
Roxies are fabulous birdies. Roxies lay eggs.
Roxy eggs are not ordinary eggs.
Look! Here is an egg.
Is the egg an ordinary egg?—I do not think so.—Why do you not think so?—I do not think so because I never saw an egg like the egg.—Do you think the egg may be an elephancy egg? I do not think the egg may be.—Why do you not think the egg may be?—I do not think the egg may be because I
do not think that elephancies can lay eggs.—Well then, what do you think the egg may be?—A fabulous egg.
You are right: the egg is a fabulous egg.
Is the fabulous egg bigger-than-biggest?—The fabulous egg is bigger-than-biggest.—Is the bigger-than-biggest, fabulous egg miraculous?—It is miraculous.—How do you think the bigger-than-biggest, fabulous, miraculous egg came here?—I think that somebody must have laid that egg.—Who do you think must have laid it?—I do not think.—Why do you not think?—Because I know.—What do you know?—I know that roxy laid the fabulous egg.
Let us now look at roxy’s egg.
It is hollow inside, like a housey. It is made of two parts. Each part is hollow. Each part is a housey. Each housey is empty. The first hollow, empty housey is the bigger-than-biggest housey of representatives and the second hollow, empty housey is the sennet. The representatives are said to lend variety to the first housey. The second housey is said to be an intimate housey because it is bigger than an elephancy’s housey, which is bigger than anybody’s housey, which is bigger than your housey, which is bigger than my housey, which is not founded upon a roxy.
What is now going on in both parts of the fabulous roxy egg?—Something.—Something what?—Something miraculous.—Something just miraculous?—Something miraculous and fabulous.—Something just miraculous and fabulous?—Something miraculous and fabulous and bigger-than-biggest.—What is something miraculous and fabulous and bigger-than-biggest?—Art.—Do you think anybody makes Art?—O yes.—Who?—Artists.—Are the Artists who make roxy Art bigger-than-biggest Artists?—O yes, they are the bigger-than biggest Artists of all roxy time.—Why are the Artists who make roxy Art the bigger-than-biggest Artists of all roxy time?—Because they are K.O.—Why?—Because the acoustics are perfect.—What is an acoustic?—Damned if I know.—Why are the acoustics perfect?—Because roxyfeller asked roxy.—Do you know what the bigger-than-biggest Artists of all roxy time who make roxy Art and who are K.O. do?—O yes.—What?—Put us to sleep.—And what do we do?—Go to the powder room.—To the powder room?—Da da da.—What powder room?—Why, roxy’s powder room.—Where is roxy’s powder room?—O, everywhere is roxy’s powder room.
A Miscellany (Revised) Page 27