After the high-wire act
And a juggler who started
With three, then four, then six
Then nine ninepins that he kept
Impossibly airborne,
While clowns throw
Buckets full of shredded paper
At shrieking kids
Who’d expected a soaking
A cage of clanging sections
Is hauled up inside the ring.
Silence slowly unfolds
With the net that’s
That’s tied around
Its upper rim
And then through
A steel-hooped tunnel
Too narrow to turn in
One by one,
(Prodded with sticks,
If they pause)
Lions enter the ring.
Quickly
Through another door
(Shiny shirt,
Riding boots)
Comes the Tamer
Whipcracking
And when it waspstings
Each lion jumps upon
A starry painted box
Whipcracking
And when it waspstings
Sitting up they paw the air
Whipcracking
And when it waspstings
Each one upon his platform
Slowly turns around
And into this silence
A child shouts out:
“Why don’t they just
Eat him up ?”
And as the Tamer stops
And slowly looks around
Each pair of lion’s eyes
Is filled with fiery light,
Within each throat
(As he cracks his whip)
A rasping growl begins.
Kevin Patrick McCann