Enron has been pummeled in prose for months. But where, you may wonder, are the poetic slams about the company, its managers, and their co-conspirators? Where is the kind of bardic bashing that since the time of Britain’s Queen Boadicea has filled the high-born and the risen-too-high with a fear that only rhyming ridicule can inspire?
Wonder no more. "The Ballad Of A Now Defunct Enron" that follows carries on this ancient bardic tradition with some contemporary marketplace flourishes. Its verse structure mimics Lawrence Durrell’s "A Ballad Of The Good Lord Nelson"—a naughty little ditty about powerful people behaving badly.
The Ballad Of A
Now Defunct Enron
Old Enron got spawned in the oily patch
Where the deals are big and the elephants hatch
And folks are real quick on a comer to latch
Big market misery, misery O.
A couple of pipelines, a dribble of gas
‘Til holdings had swelled to a critical mass
Then suitors came calling like big mouthy bass
Big market misery, misery O.
Wallstreeters proclaimed ‘this is something quite new’
The auditors shrugged and then nodded on cue
The pols stuck their hands out, they wanted some, too
Big market misery, misery O.
While stock prices rose, the bosses they bailed
With overseas partnerships loses they veiled
Quite sure they would never get nailed or jailed
Big market misery, misery O.
Now all is unraveled, we see clear the map
investors are livid, they’ve shut off the tap
Dick Cheney’s so worried he can’t even nap
Big market misery, misery O.
******** |
