Classic Poem

If so some man when I began to be
I looked beyond the confines of the sea.
I thought my books by German and by Frog
Would be read in deutsch and frankish — Britain's log
For Nineteen Twenty-Six and the years just after
That naivety must provoke our present laughter.
(I had reckoned without our british business-men):
They have never passed the frontiers of the pen
I wrote them with, except my Hitler Book.
That got through the blockade of boob and crook.
A surprising feat, it swam the Nordic Sea,
And planted its swastika in High Germany.
But lo upon the sidewalks of New York
I am now of the same standing as Montalk,
If that, of course. Spluttered in Cabala
It reaches me, the hiss of menacing blah.
Meanwhile, excluded, Snooty Baronet ,
Felt the full boycott, it is not sold yet,
Nor ever will be. These are long vendettas.
A peculiar people, neither forgivers nor forgetters.
All that I know is that my agents write
" Your Hitler Book has harmed you" — in a night,
Somewhat like Byron — only I waken thus
To find myself not famous but infamous.