{"id":298,"date":"2011-06-26T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-06-26T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=298"},"modified":"2011-06-26T11:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-06-26T11:00:00","slug":"thomas-orszag-lands-lion-tamer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/thomas-orszag-lands-lion-tamer\/","title":{"rendered":"Thomas Orszag-Land's 'Lion Tamer'"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Lion Tamer<\/span><\/p>\n

Beyond the bars, the circus crowd sits pale<\/span>
to watch the beasts perform the tricks they loathe \u2013 <\/span>
They hope that I, their tamer, may just fail.<\/span>
But with my whip I will control them both.<\/span>

I have outfaced the adulating crowd<\/span>
and I have learned to ride the lions' rage \u2013<\/span>
My early quest for freedom had its shroud
in fame found here within the circus cage.<\/p>\n

For freedom, I pursued the painted lights
(while others dreamed of flight in tame unrest)
in tearful longing past a thousand sights \u2013
Within my trade, today I am the best
 
and watch the crowd behind its fearful mask
and watch the painted lights that will seduce \u2013
The lions' foolish master, thus I ask
if there's still time to put my life to use.<\/p>\n

*Thomas Orszag-Land<\/span> is a poet and award-winning foreign correspondent writing on Eastern Europe and the Middle East. His poetry has been published by The Spectator<\/span> and The New York Times<\/span>, his reviews and polemics by The Times Literary Supplement<\/span> and Poetry Review<\/span>. His most recent major work is Deathmarch: Holocaust Poems<\/span><\/a> translated from the Hungarian of Mikl\u00f3s Radn\u00f3ti (Snakeskin, England, 2009).<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Lion Tamer Beyond the bars, the circus crowd sits paleto watch the beasts perform the tricks they loathe \u2013 They hope that I, their tamer, may just fail.But with my whip I will control them both.I have outfaced the adulating crowdand I have learned to ride the lions' rage \u2013My early quest for freedom […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}