National Ransom - Elvis Costello

Running pell-mell and harum-scarum

Running as hot as they do or dare

Stick out your tongue

And drink down all the venom

From Cut-Throat Cuthbert

And Millicent St. Cyr

From the real old Macau

To the new False Americas

In the liberated territories

Unusual suspects shake down

Shake down, shake down

Various dubious characters

Mother’s in the kitchen picking bones for breakfast

Boiling them down by the bushel and the score

Pull out your thumb and count what’s left of your fist

There’s a wolf at the window with ravening maw

Did you find how to lie?

Did you find out just how to cheat?

The elite bleat, their obsolete

But are your prospects?

Exact, perfect object

Now, if you’d only genuflect

They’re running wild

Just like some childish tantrum

Meanwhile we’re working every day

Paying off the National Ransom

Woe betide all this hocus-pocus

They’re running us ragged at their first attempt

Around the time the killing stopped on Wall St

You couldn’t hold me, baby with anything but contempt

Letters peal slowly from our speech

The claxton attempts to preach

Stretching for stars still out of reach

Drowning

Flailing

Outside someone’s wailing