Rob Schackne #500 - "On Being Told To Leave/Grasshopper"

On Being Told To Leave/Grasshopper 

Eating bitterness
it will taste sweet
kicked out of China
15 years teaching here
the moans turn to laughter

did you teach me well?

Broadmeadows AMES
I declined to justify
in political English
what I'd been doing there
(the 6 years with refugees)

did you teach me well?

I sat the bloody exam
started Monash Law
till the English Dept ganged up on me
the smartest people I'd ever met
(urged to go on thinking)

did you teach me well?

but nothing like when
I left the Accident & Emergency Centre
after five years of mindfulness
and a thousand seconds
of reading pain