HAPPY DAYS
Memoirs, 1780
‘Bankers:
gentlemen at table,
usurers in the
counting house
– besides they
take advantage
of every public calamity.’
3. I have the
feeling I have lived too long.
Everywhere about
me there is something wrong
which has no
prospect of being put right
because other
people think it’s alright.
8. Capitalism is
the robbery of the people by the people
for the people.
Winner takes all. If I was a young man
I’d be out on the
street. But I’m worried about my pension
and the exchange
rate. And offshore investments. What happpened
to the revolution
has happened to me. It has grown old
and tired and
corrupt in a petty way. Still I think they’re prats
to put up with
what I have. Though I haven’t suffered, yet.
10. There’s not enough to go round.
But there is enough to square
if you’re in the inner circle.
No need to despair.
Just keep your feet on the ground,
and pick up what any jerk will.
My approach was to miss classes,
and leave the results in God’s hands,
but since everybody passes
the last one, I am confident
of being successful in the end.
20. Money is the
root of all strife
and religion the
flower, my mother said.
That is not to
say the tree of life
oughtn’t to be
surely grounded,
and grow to
fruition as nature intended.
But the laws of
evil are up-ended.
The flower once
at war with the roots
is now withering
in deadwood.
24. The
revolution is in the wrong hands.
The weak don’t
inherit the earth. The handstands
of acrobats
accompanied by brass bands
are all very
amusing. Out in the street
you need suicide
bombers, and fresh meat,
to get the full
attention of the élite.
26. Killed my new
born in the bath
and put her in
the deep freeze.
Then put on my
Sunday hat
and jumped off
the railway bridge.
Funeral private.
No flowers please.
32. Nature is not
best pleased
with what it’s
made of man.
Says, he’s no
better than
a sanctimonious
beast.
Man, though, gets
its back on
his primordial
patron
by
quasi-ecological means
(everybody eat up
your greens).
And soon both
will have ceased
in their struggle
to co-exist.
34. If life is
only a matter of time,
clocks merely
tell us we are dying.
More
life-enhancing, to circumvent
the inevitable
appointment
is a sundial, in a
gloomy clime.
So you can forget
where the time went.
37. Today I’m in
a terrible fury
for no good
reason. What’s called, being beside
yourself. But
tomorrow the cure will be
discovering a
cause. Thus justified,
I am restored to
the best of humours.
I presume it’s
all a matter of pride.
And next day I’m
back with the fumers.
Incontinence of
temperament’s a rocky ride.
‘As you chose
your park bench so you must lie on it’,
says the clochard
in smoking jacket and gray pants.
He offers me a
cigar that’s already lit,
and takes the
money. ‘It’s always safe in my hands,
as long as you
don’t ask it back.’ Out of the deep
of his sack he
fishes out a sealskin ledger,
and a pen
dangling from his mobile, a keep
from a Total
seminar. He is on edge, or
rather, not being
used to a tight belt, the wriggle
of his potbelly
pops a button of his shirt.
I sign along the
dotted line, and my squiggle
makes his lips
smack. I throw away the pen. The earth
is turning to mud
under our feet. When we stand up
our boots are
leaking, and the ground begins to suck...