Had a bit of a google, is this it?
The Flashing of Badges (Bruce Dawe)
The first thing the dead-beat does
Is flash his badge...
If you’re in uniform,
I’m an old digger myself, he says. If coming from Mass,
He’s Catholic of course and loyal as hell,
While if you’re wearing corduroys, carrying books,
He’ll grimace towards learning’s obscure god,
And—like a child opening its hand revealing
A pet frog for your wonderment—disclose
Literacy squatting somewhere in his family.
Which makes you wish to God he’d only stop
Long enough for you to acknowledge freely
(Via your pocket) the world’s rank injustice.
Yet if by such magnanimous means you should
Cut him off halfway through some bleary anecdote,
You do him double harm, since what sustains him
In that Tierra del Fuego which distinguishes
Dignity’s southern limits is the faith
That somwhere still, in a sheltered corner of the bleak
Island, in the lee of the storm, it’s possible
For a frail personal herb of deception
To take root and survive where awareness shrieks
Nothing but wintry truths from year to year
And value, the essential topsoil, sluices
Seaward with every small indifferent stream.
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