Three Monkeys on the underground

Two Chained Monkeys -Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1562)

Brueghel’s Two Monkeys

This is what I see in my dream about final exams:
two monkeys, chained to the floor, sit on the windowsill,
the sky behind them flutters,
the sea is taking its bath.
The exam is History of Mankind.
I stammer and hedge.
One monkey stares and listens with mocking disdain,
the other seems to be dreaming away-
but when it’s clear I don’t know what to say
he prompts me with a gentle
clinking of his chain.

Wislawa Szymborska

Seen on the underground on my way to a Memory & Cognition exam.

About caspar

Caspar is just one monkey among billions. Battering his keyboard without expectations even of peanuts, let alone of aping the Immortal Bard. By day he is an infantologist at Birkbeck Babylab, by night he runs BabyLaughter.net
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