“Quiet, Please!”
Lyrics: T-Bone Slim.
Tune: Unknown.
The furor of the Fuehrer had subsided in a day
And rumbling tones of II Duce sounded flat and far away.
The silences of commissars fell on our ear absurd,
And “Ataturk” was searching for a real nutritious word.
And East and West the silence rang; re-echoed North and South—
And there stood a thousand millionaires with fingers in their mouth,
And diplomats in whispers purred behind their snowy hand,
And statesmen like an ostrich put their bald heads in the sand.
A helluva note, what’s going on—how long has this been so?
Why are the vested plutocrats apart from all their dough?
Why are the book-learned parasites so tongue-tied all at once?
And the businessmen performing like a 14-karat dunce?
Why, don’t you know? The working class fell heir to all the Earth
And started to remodel it to bring out all its worth;
Replete with tools, machinery, they won it in a will,
A million shops, a million ships, and every mine and mill.
The whole wide world was theirs to have—Yes, every stick and stone,
And liberals admitted that slaves came to their own,
And that is why those social lions feel like worried sheep,
For now they seem to realize that workless talk is cheap.
Some Sons of Rest got nervous, reaching for their mop of hair,
While other Giants of the Past seemed floating in the air—
But everything was quiet, not a tocsin dared to sound,
And everyone felt certain that the jobs would reach around.
“The time has come,” the Walrus said, “to talk of many things,
Of shoes and ships and sealing wax, and cabbages and kings.”
“Quite right,” the noble penguin purred, “You’re stating but a fact.
Not only should we wax our spiel but we should also act.”