Return!

This tragi-comic tale,
or poetry plodding to the wild
and running back to classroom,
is not new but a historical tale
that started with a heroic battle
between reason and emotion,
and Plato, a pseudo rational man,
banishing her into exile, to the wild,
to suffer, repent, purge her emotions
and to come back to classroom anew.

With her three sisters in exile,
an internal battle she did
to oust her emotions
and to be a cool, rational teacher,
yet her lovers wanted her not to smother
but to overflow with emotions,
come back to the classroom
and water us, the ‘withering plants
with deep emotions’.

Grammar Translators then
‘crowned’ her, ‘garlanded’ her
and made her
their Muse,

yet Audiolinguals,
(parrot trainers),
schemed with structuralists
and behaviorists and sent her back to the wild
to suffer
for forty years.

Brumfit, Carter, Long
and Widdowson;
(CLT’s heavyweights)
with Hirvela and Spack,
(writing pedagogues)
defended her;
and her sisters in their case;
and Faulkner, Hanauer and Leggo,
her illustrious sons and daughters,
hold her now high above their head,
yet some, not many, but some,
I still hear,
whisper, “She’s so low”.

Copyright © November 19, 2019, Newton Ranaweera
Image source: Pixabay