Now entertain conjecture of a time
when creeping poison and the poring pens
of maddening middle management
foul the wide vessel of the universe.
From camp to camp the hum
of all these cohorts stilly sounds
That the fixed secretaries almost receive
the secret belches of their panicked thoughts.
Email answers email and by their threats
each lesson plan is drivelled on apace.
Leaders threaten all in high and boastful nays,
Piercing the staffroom air; and in the bars
The publicans, accomplishing the teachers
with endless frothing lagers serving up,
give dreadful note of preparation.
The interactive whiteboard clocks do crow,
The confident and over lusty ‘spectors
Do the low-paid teachers play at dice.
So what doth make our learned, o’er stressed folk
Bequake themselves with maggot graveyard fright?
It is, as may unworthiness define,
A little touch of Ofsted in the night.
