Attack On The Ad-Man
by A. S. J. Tessimond
This trumpeter of nothingness, employed
To keep our reason dull and null and void.
This man of wind and froth and flux will sell
The wares of any who reward him well.
Praising whatever he is paid to praise,
He hunts for ever-newer, smarter ways
To make the gilt seen gold; the shoddy, silk;
To cheat us legally; to bluff and bilk
By methods which no jury can prevent
Because the law’s not broken, only bent.
This mind for hire, this mental prostitute
Can tell the half-lie hardest to refute;
Knows how to hide an inconvenient fact
And when to leave a doubtful claim unbacked;
Manipulates the truth but not too much,
And if his patter needs the Human Touch,
Skillfully artless, artlessly naive,
Wears his convenient heart upon his sleeve.
He uses words that once were strong and fine,
Primal as sun and moon and bread and wine,
True, honourable, honoured, clear and keen,
And leaves them shabby, worn, diminished, mean.
He takes ideas and trains them to engage
In the long little wars big combines wage…
He keeps his logic loose, his feelings flimsy;
Turns eloquence to cant and wit to whimsy;
Trims language till it fits his clients, pattern
And style’s a glossy tart or limping slattern.
He studies our defences, finds the cracks
And where the wall is weak or worn, attacks.
lie finds the fear that’s deep, the wound that’s tender,
And mastered, outmanouevered, we surrender.
We who have tried to choose accept his choice
And tired succumb to his untiring voice.
The dripping tap makes even granite soften
We trust the brand-name we have heard so often
And join the queue of sheep that flock to buy;
We fools who know our folly, you and I.
A few random poems:
- Федор Тютчев – Как бестолковы числа эти
- Resolved Be Loved
- Владимир Высоцкий – Палач
- The Declaration of London by Rudyard Kipling
- Sunday Morning Blues poem – A. D. Winans poems | Poetry Monster
- To-Morrow To Fresh Woods And Pastures New poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Epitaph on the same by Robert Burns
- Her Majesty’s Diamond Jubilee poem – Zameer Careem poems | Poetry Monster
- Words by Sylvia Plath
- Cloris, it is not thy disdaine by Sidney Godolphin
- Inscription to Chloris by Robert Burns
- Владимир Маяковский – Гимн судье
- Erin! The Tear and the Smile in Thine Eyes by Thomas Moore
- The Hesitating Veteran poem – Ambrose Bierce poems | Poems and Poetry
- Did Not by Thomas Moore
External links
Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus
Talking Writing Monster’s Page –
Batty Writing – the bat’s idle chatter, thoughts, ideas and observations, all original, all fresh
Poems in English
- An Arab Shepherd Is Searching For His Goat On Mount Zion by Yehuda Amichai
- A Precise Woman by Yehuda Amichai
- A Pity, We Were Such A Good Invention by Yehuda Amichai
- A Jewish Cemetery In Germany by Yehuda Amichai
- A Dog After Love by Yehuda Amichai
- Straw sandal half sunk by Yosa Buson
- Sparrow singing by Yosa Buson
- Ploughing the land by Yosa Buson
- Old well by Yosa Buson
- Not quite dark yet by Yosa Buson
- My arm for a pillow by Yosa Buson
- Listening to the moon by Yosa Buson
- Lighting one candle by Yosa Buson
- Yosa Buson – Yosa Buson
- Hokku Poems in Four Seasons by Yosa Buson
- His Holiness the Abbot by Yosa Buson
- He’s on the porch by Yosa Buson
- Harvest moon by Yosa Buson
- Evening wind by Yosa Buson
- Elegy to the Old Man Hokuju by Yosa Buson
More external links (open in a new tab):
Doska or the Board – write anything
Search engines:
Yandex – the best search engine for searches in Russian (and the best overall image search engine, in any language, anywhere)
Qwant – the best search engine for searches in French, German as well as Romance and Germanic languages.
Ecosia – a search engine that supposedly… plants trees
Duckduckgo – the real alternative and a search engine that actually works. Without much censorship or partisan politics.
Yahoo– yes, it’s still around, amazingly, miraculously, incredibly, but now it seems to be powered by Bing.
Parallel Translations of Poetry
The Poetry Repository – an online library of poems, poetry, verse and poetic works
Arthur Seymour John Tessimond (1902 -1962) was an English poet. He had a tumultuous childhood, ran from boarding school, went to work, somehow attended the University of Liverpool, avoided service in WWI and then discovered that he is unfit for military service after he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, which in those days was known as manic depression. A.S. Tessimond is a wonderful poet though maybe somewhat underappreciated poet. He died from in 1962 from a brain haemorrhage.