Climbing Up
When you climb up to the middle classes
you leave a lot behind you,
you leave a lot, you've lost a lot
and you've nobody to remind you
of all the things they squeezed out of you
when they took you and refined you.
When they took you and refined you
they squeezed out most of your guts;
they took away your good old stones
and gave you a couple of nuts;
and they taught you to speak King's English
and butter your slippery buts.
Oh you've got to be like a monkey
if you climb up the tree!
You've no more use for the solid earth
and the lad you used to be.
You sit in the boughs and gibber
with superiority.
They all gibber and gibber and chatter,
and never a word they say
comes really out of their guts, lad,
they make it up half way;
they make it up, and it's always the same,
if it's serious or if it's play.
You think they're the same as you are
and then you find they're not,
and they never were nor would be,
not one of the whole job lot.
And you have to act up like they do
or they think you're off your dot.
There isn't a man among 'em,
not one; they all seemed to me
like monkeys or angels or something, in a limited
liability company;
like a limited liability company
they are, all limited liability.
What they're limited to or liable
to, I could never make out.
But they're all alike, an' it makes you
want to get up an' shout
an' blast 'em forever; but they'd only
think you a lower-class lout.
I tell you, something's been done to 'em,
to the pullets up above;
there's not a cock bird among 'em
though they're always on about love,
an' you could no more get 'em a move on,
no! no matter how you may shove!