The Staff Clerk's Lament

A poem by "Hoosit"

The Staff Clerk's Lament

I am sitting in my dingy little office, where a stingy
Ray of sunlight struggles feeble down beneath the buildings tall:
And the stuffy air and 'gritty of the 'dusty Pitt Street city
Through the open windows floating, spread foulness overall.
And in place of lowing cattle, I can hear the fiendish rattle
Of electric trams and motors making hurry down the streets;

And the language uninviting of the office typist skiting
Comes fit fully and faintly, through the ceaseless check off sheets.
The hurrying clerks all daunt me, and their pallid, faces haunt, me,
As-they shoulder one another in their rush and nervous haste;
With their eager eyes and greedy, and their stunted forms and weedy;

For clerk they have no time to grow they have no time to waste.
Now, just a while I’ll tarry, ere I go away to marry
And have a turn at farming, where they sow the shining seed;
Instead of the eternal sheets and cheques infernal,
I’ll be bagging up potatoes on the Tweed.

Notes

From The Railway and Tramway officers Gazette, April 1918