The Ballad of the Researchers
I know scientists
Who walk with their bellies sticking out
It seems they take
Their bladders for lanterns
I know researchers
Who work fervently
To find out why
Oysters have that taste
I know chemists
Who always seem sad
And keep in their cupboards
A molecule of delay
Under their soft hats
They seem afraid of everything
And shout in the corridors
Lots of barbaric words
My neighbor upstairs
Never leaves his computer keyboard
He fell head over heels
For a database
He’s looking for a sweetheart
To find a wife
He’s got a program
For matters of the heart
With microprocessor
I don’t really believe in it
It’s not real work
Synthetic music
And psychedelic drawings
Come, let me install you
In central memory
In an iron cage
A little monkey despaired
For peanuts
It does somersaults
Subject of an experiment
On science’s altar
Work miracles for me
So I can write
I need a thesis
Three hundred pages at ease
Ah, what hard labor
To become a doctor
From this pile of paper
This horrible mess
Ah, will I come up with an idea?
There are physicists
Who get off on Latin
Their quantum mechanics
Gives them tics
They create particles
Like others make bubbles
In their cyclotron
With equations
And astronomers
Like butlers
Before their telescopes
They bow and curtsy
The sky in three volumes
Or carbon chemistry
In their universe
My head’s spinning
Theoretical physics
And mathematics
The world in formulas
Too bad if you’re no good at it
At the mathematicians’ ball
We get a bit bored
How to party
With that big brain
For its Nobel Prize
Its eternal glory
We spend sleepless nights
We work on Sundays
In seminars
Behind friendly smiles
Everyone thinks they’re Einstein
Alas, researchers
Still scare me a bit
With their lasers
They play at war
With chemistry
They do lots of nasty things
And the beautiful Earth
Becomes a trash heap
Instead of creating
Lots of good things to eat
With nuclei
They act like idiots
If we let them be
Tomorrow it’ll be hell
A thermonuclear hell