Titania Scopticos: ‘The Professor’s Peanut Butter’

The Professor’s Peanut Butter

Tell me a tale, Muse, of tyranny,
Of free men who can no longer be free,
And how the most absurd, barbaric rules,
Emerge from universities and schools,
Making a desert where one used to find
A permanent oasis of the mind.
I need a stronger muse to sing my theme:
POLITICAL CORRECTNESS reigns supreme!
Behold her minions: DULNESS, CENSORSHIP
Giving my muse a swollen, bloody lip!
Alas, I’m forced to sing my song alone
So please turn off your mobile telephone.
Past quadrangles built from the best sandstone,
The Gothic arches built last century,
The library, the jacaranda tree,
Lawns manicured so as to look like baize,
Professor Sophos, as he did most days,
Walked to the lecture hall to share his knowledge
Hard-won from working forty years in college.
As a classicist, he was admired:
His scholarship was brilliant, so inspired
That even undergrads could recognize
That learned darkness thinned before his eyes.
The world’s best men, who share the prefix…