bout de papier, Vol. 7, No. 4 (1990), p. 37
I would have preferred to have given this poem
a portentous title out of some learned tome
like “An Analytical Appraise”
or “A Mandarin’s Malaise”
Oh. You thought I was writing about my girth,
My “Permanent Middle” being a keen source of mirth.
But no. I write on the problem of promotion,
or lack thereof, which is causing such commotion;
which in its way is about waist as well, but with a different connotation.
Although Mandarin’s Malaise has a delightful ring
I am, unfortunately, a mere underling.
Not too under, you understand
but under enough that I’ve no one to command,
or harangue
though I’ve tried from Accra to Penang.
Under I would say about six levels, which is rather dispiriting,
although I’m assured the Department is “delayering”;
which means that since I’m in my prime
it won’t delayer enough in my lifetime.
All I ask, you see
is that I be
promoted to the level of my incompetence
which, given the quality of many in prominence
seems relatively easy, though my preference
is for promotion without the grandiloquence
flatulence
and subservience
I see around.
Supervisors redound!
When the Wall has fallen and Spring’s back in Prague,
when the people in the Baltics are beginning to arg-
ue that for their children and their esprit
Pappa Gorby should let them go free,
with Mandela out of prison and Pinochet gone
the whole world has crossed a Rubicon.
In this present climate, surely some exhortation
to promote me forthwith without gross fulmination
is not untoward, though it cause emendation
and much exculpation
of a system of promotion which enshrines rustication.
“Now do be realistic” I can hear Personnel cackle,
“Promotion’s not a political improbability but a bureaucratic miracle”.
View the original scanned pages →
Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 7, No. 4 (1990), p. 37. Read the rest of this issue →
