And so, making clear in advance

I know there are miles between us;

and I reckon myself with the tramps, which

is a place of honour in this world:

under the wheels of luxury, at

table with cripples and hunchbacks…

From the top of the bell-tower roof,

I proclaim it: I love the rich.

For their rotten, unsteady root

for the damage done in their cradle

for the absent-minded way their hands

go in and out of their pockets;

for the way their softest word is

obeyed like a shouted order; because

they will not be let into heaven; and

because they don’t look in your eyes;

and because they send secrets by courier!

and their passions by errand boy.

In the nights that are thrust upon them they

kiss and drink under compulsion,

and because in all their accountings

in boredom, in gilding, in wadding,

they can’t buy me I’m too brazen:

I confirm it, I love the rich!

and in spite of their shaven fatness,

their fine drink (wink, and spend):

some sudden defeatedness

and a look that is like a dog’s

doubting…

the core of their balance

nought, but are the weights true?

I say that among all outcasts

there are no such orphans on earth.

There is also a nasty fable

about camels getting through needles

for that look, surprised to death

apologizing for sickness, as

if they were suddenly bankrupt: ‘I would have been

glad to lend, but’ and their silence.

‘I counted in carats once and then I was one of them.’

For all these things, I swear it: I love the rich.