[y66]

The Lion Tamer

By Paul Durcan

"Well, what do you work at?" she said to me after about six months
Of what a mutual journalist friend was pleased to call our "relationship".
"I’m a lion tamer," I replied, offhandedly as possible,
Hoping she’d say: "Are you really?"
Instead she said: "I don’t believe you."
I jumped up from my chair and I strode across the room,
Stumbling over a wickerwork magazine rack.
I knelt on one knee at her feet and gazed up at her:
Slowly she edged away from me and backed out the door
And glancing out the window I saw her bounding down the road,
Her fair hair gleaming in the wind, her crimson voice growling.
I kicked over a stool and threw my whip on the floor.
What I had hoped for from her was a thorough mauling.
But she preferred artistic types. She had no appetite for lion tamers.

[y66]

Quote

... Paul Durcan, the inspired minstrel of modern-day Ireland

-- Trinity College Dublin Prof Anna Chahoud, at a ceremony honoring Paul Durcan last year.

[jjbrr]

[kenberg]

I know I have told this story before but I am old so it's OK. During my single years I was eating lunch at the cafeteria between the National Gallery of Art and the East Wing. I took a vacant spot at a table. I was chatting away with a couple of women and I thought the conversation was going well. One asked "What do you do for a living?" ... "I am a mathematician" ... "That's too bad" They got up and left the table.

We take a perverse pride in such things. Or perhaps it is just a convenient explanation.

[y66]

Maybe lion tamers and mathematicians should wear berets.