''In Re a Gentleman, One''

Paterson turns his sharp eye to the legal profession in this wickedly funny verse. The poem imagines an attorney summoned before the Full Court to answer for misconduct, his identity protected by the formal fiction of 'a gentleman, one of the attorneys of the Supreme Court' until guilt is established. What follows is pure Paterson irony: the dignified language of the law colliding with the messy reality of professional disgrace. It's a reminder that the man who wrote 'Clancy of the Overflow' could also skewer the pretensions of Sydney's professional classes with devastating precision. This is Paterson unchained from the bush, proving his satirical fangs.