The Revolution Will Not Be Telegraphed
You will not be able to stay home, old mate.
You will not be able to flee the smoke, go to ground, and lie doggo.
You will not be able to lose yourself on absinthe and opium,
Skip down to the club or the public for a quick one,
Because the revolution will not be telegraphed.
The revolution will not be telegraphed.
The revolution will not be transmitted in dots and dashes
Translated by Powell’s semaphoric boys.
The revolution will not show you stereographs
Transmitted to your handheld
Or posted broadsheet-style on the street for the plebes.
Of the Great Game and Chinese Gordon and Shaka Z.
The revolution will not be telegraphed.
The revolution will not be come to you over the mojo wire,
Distant electronic discharge accumulated on the babbage,
Quoting Jules V and Herbert G and Oscar Wilde
The revolution will not expect every man to do his duty.
The revolution will not evoke God and country.
The revolution will not lay back and think of England, because the revolution will not be telegraphed, Old Bill.
There will be no pictures of you and Bertie Wooster
Cradling a policeman’s hat, rushing down the block on the dead run,
or trying to slide that suspect soup tureen into the boot of a stolen lorry.
The Beeb will not be posing updates at the top of the hour,
or results from the outer boroughs.
The revolution will not be telegraphed.
There will be no engravings of the pinks at Homestead in the dailies.
There will be no engravings of the pinks in Haymarket in the dailies.
There will be no pictures of Spring-Heeled Jack in the dock at the Old Bailey, no shots of Albert in the can.
There will be no Muybridge sequence of Doctor William Gull fleeing an angry mob of consulting forensic experts and aether-linked mediums who had come to the same conclusion at the same time.
The ink-blurred protagonists of the penny dreads will not shed their copyrighted shackles and go blinking into the public square.
Aqualunged writers will not drive by and bang on the sides of their coach and fours, shouting out the numbers and roles they need,
hoping those released from literary Newgate will trade their freedom for a chance to once more play the Palladium.
No one will give a damn about what happened to Little Nell.
The revolution will not be telegraphed.
There will be no boffins providing exposition, no suffragettes in slacks smoking, no mute servant class made of dutiful coils and springs.
Its libretto will not be written by Gilbert.
Its music will not be penned by Sullivan, and it will not be sung by Lilly Langtree, nor dedicated to Emperor Norton.
The revolution will not be telegraphed.
The revolution will not be a glass-domed ticker tape unspooling
about an iron age, iron horse, iron chancellor.
You will not have to worry about the valley of death, about jam tomorrow, about standing on the burning deck.
The revolution is not a joy forever.
The revolution will not creep in on little cat feet.
It will not look where it treads.
The revolution will be a dark and stormy night.
The revolution will not be telegraphed, will not be telegraphed
will not be telegraphed, will not be telegraphed.
The revolution will be no busker’s show, Old Nick;
The revolution will be live.
More later,
