Big business bows their knees to Hussein.
And what should a man do? Seek some Grandee, take him for a patron, and like the obscure creeper clasping a tree trunk and licking the bark of that which props it up, attain to height by craft instead of strength? No, I thank you. Dedicate, as they all do, poems to financiers? Wear motley in the humble hope of seeing the lips of a minister distend for once in a smile not ominous of ill? No, I thank you. Eat every day a toad? Be threadbare at the belly with groveling? Have his skin dirty soonest at the knees? Perform feats of dorsal elasticity? NO, I THANK YOU! With one hand stroke the goat while with the other one water the cabbage? Make gifts of senna that counter-gifts of rhubarb may accrue, and indefatigibly swing his censer in some beard? No, I thank you. Push himself from lap to lap, become a little great man in a great little circle, propel his ship[ with madrigals for oars and in his sails the sighs of elderly ladies? No, I thank you. Get the good editor Sercy to print his verses at proper expense? No, I thank you. Contrive to be nominated pope in conclaves held by imbeciles in wineshops? No, I thank you. Work to construct a name based on a sonnet instead of constructing other sonnets? No, I thank you. Discover talent in tyros, and in them alone? No, I thank you. Stand in terror of what gazettes may say and say to himself, “at whatever cost may I figure in the Paris Mercury?” No, I thank you. Calculate, cringe, peak, prefer making a call to a poem — petition, solicit, apply? No, I thank you. No, I thank you. No, I thank you.