Retirement Blues

(Re-printed with thanks from a Festschrift for Otfried Boerner, a well-known Hamburg, comprehensive school teacher trainer.)

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the staff from carping about nothing
Silence the copiers and with a little aplomb,
Bring out the glass decanter - then I'll be gone.

Let the care-taker at the LIA whisper
Carrying the message "No more trouble with this one",
Put more desks into my room
Let the stress continue to make you all mean.
Classrooms in the North, the South, the East and West,
They were my responsibilities, even on Sundays.
The English classroom was my heartbeat, my breath, my song
I thought working would last forever: I was not wrong.

Will my memos be wanted now? If not tear up everyone;
Pack up my desk and dismantle the CD Rom;
Pour away my coffee and sweep up my litter;
Let's hope in the days full of work in other areas,
I'll not be bitter.

With apologies to W.H. Auden and Straphanger

Poems not on the underground - A parody edited by 'Straphanger', The Windrush Press 1997