Acquisition

Paul was different from the rest of us
most took themselves, but not study seriously,
he did neither.
Droll, arriving late at a seminar
opening the door and saying,
“ it smells like there’ s monkeys in here playing poker ”
and
another time someone said it was so cold he might
need to engage in auto eroticism to warm up
Paul, instantly and slow march replied
“ never masturbate in the morning,
you don’t know who you’ll meet in the afternoon.”
Most thought it clever to seek out easy credits
to boost grades to pad course loads – geography,
psychology,
introductory mathematics or statistics,
the then unrestricted environmental studies
4 – 6 credits times 3 or 4 towards 96 – ka-ching.

Except Paul, doing Swedish
he didn’t seem to understand –
why not the time-honoured Dodge of
geography, psychology, et cetera et cetera?
“Because old boy I spent three years in Sweden as a child
I speak Swedish rather well,
if I do say so myself.”