Vegetable Mart

Vegetable Mart

(Professor: a title taken by charlatans, quacks, dancing masters, etc.)
Chamber’s Twentieth Century Dictionary

Each one in his own
Ivory tower is ensconced
Puffed up and proud
That he’s invincible

Yet; the keepers of the towers
Are not of their own!

The limits of their doing
Are set from without them;
The extent of their being, marked
By “thou shalt!” and “thou shalt not!”
And yet they profess
(to claim insincerely, the dictionary says)
To nurture the minds of a coming age

To break out
From within the confines prescribed
They’ll never conceive
Instead
Enjoin upon all others
To obey – and question not!

The Sciences, the Arts, the Humanities as well
All the faculties they’ve got
Except the one to teach
And year by year
(while high on the town the campus does frown)
Out they send yet another harvest
Of their ‘noblest’ toil
Who like them go through life
Thinking not, being not, living not!