Oh Mistress-Mine (Revised)

Oh Mistress-Mine, like the Old Testament’s Prodigal Son you
return unto the fold so stealthily, coming to us like a Prodigal
Daughter; you’ve rested well, it’s seen in your demeanour,
you are calm and resigned as sensed in your serenity

Will it be another foray into unchartered territory where
you’ll do innovative work, showing how we, like you, can
stay home courageously, with long disappearances, sudden
returns as a new moon after an eclipse

To shyly smile, win new acolytes with strict orders, rejecting
irrational demands made eagerly by troops who stayed
guarding sacred portals from barbarian horde invasions –
uneducated clients who demand non-entitled services

We are a profession fighting for executive recognition of
our smooth relays of foreign texts into a civilised tongue,
one that is understood by the Anglo-Saxon hordes rampaging
south from the cold northern slopes

Be that as it may, welcome back, Oh Prodigal Daughter and
Supervisor of troops, with military alacrity we are ready to
follow orders, except where they clash with ethics forged
through millennia of fighting for right & free expression –

Rights you claim personally, Oh Mistress Mine, not share
with the rest who earn their living where you merely dally
occasionally, singing from time to time ‘hey nonny nonny’,
with much ado about nothing

And in this institution lies only the way of the dreaded
watery death and creatures of the bottomless profundity
waiting to swallow all of the mighty and haughty who
do not care where they tread…