Blessed the bureaucrat

(This was first posted on the discontinued blog at mjjzf.eu)

I am, indeed, a bureaucrat. This one gets me every time:


The Man In The Bowler Hat

by A. S. J. Tessimond

I am the unnoticed, the unnoticable man:

The man who sat on your right in the morning train:

The man who looked through like a windowpane:

The man who was the colour of the carriage, the colour of the mounting

Morning pipe smoke.

I am the man too busy with a living to live,

Too hurried and worried to see and smell and touch:

The man who is patient too long and obeys too much

And wishes too softly and seldom. I am the man they call the nation’s backbone,

Who am boneless – playable castgut, pliable clay:

The Man they label Little lest one day

I dare to grow. I am the rails on which the moment passes,

The megaphone for many words and voices:

I am the graph diagram,

Composite face. I am the led, the easily-fed,

The tool, the not-quite-fool,

The would-be-safe-and-sound,

The uncomplaining, bound,

The dust fine-ground,

Stone-for-a-statue waveworn pebble-round

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