YouLoveMe

The night before I left I spoke with Fanny, I told her I was sad I was leaving her to fight, She told me she wanted to be at my side. That it would be holy for us to die together to make men free, I said I would do my best to live, That my love for her would never die. At Ball's Bluff fortune cast her die, A spent shot struck me on the fanny, Battle smoke rose like a gray wraith, curling, live, I ran away and toward the middle of the fight, We were retreating from Virginia to the land of the free, I felt no animus for the Rebs on the other side. III As I ran a Minie ball pierced my chest on the near right side, I said, "I'm a gone coon, I'm gonna die, God of this damn pain I wanna be free." I closed my eyes and thought of Fanny, I disbelieved in my belief in the fight, In reason, in morals, in the will to live. IV My father the doctor knew it could be better not to live, I had laudanum hidden in a vial in a pocket by my side, With it I could peacefully die, Think ...

Sex is like law--no to formalism! Likewise to moralistic reproval, To Swift'ian Big End--Little End schism, To fights for red light district removal. Hopeless cads coexist with hopeless dads, I happen to be one of the latter, I saw her first when we were not yet grads, We are she are me are all that matter. Darwin measures us by fecundity, I am Genghis Khan, verbal division, You might say that we lack profundity, But we reproduce!  Bah to derision! Sex and Reason was not a Pauline work, It was a lark, a part-time scholar's perk. One morning 

Did I believe in the EAL creed? Yes.  But my loyalty was divided, To Yeats and Eliot I gave greater heed     than to models with feelings elided. I was no Mr. Brooks.  Sanctuary       was not my deepest passion, I rooted               in the ground, I flew to no high aerie,                      No Keats I, in me no genius fruited. Was John Nash as great a talent as Keats? Perhaps, and his fate was just as tragic, I revere them both and envy their feats,  For me art possesses greater magic. I am third said a Chicago player, Yes. Art, math, me in a lower layer.

EAL was my conversion story, I who was Saul was born again as Paul, Econ's logic underlay law's glory, I would preach to Jew, to Gentile, to all. I wrote the book in a red hot fever, A rational one, I hasten to add, I was a renegade eager beaver, Opening channels was good, dams were bad.   On and on I wrote, on and on I gnawed. Freedom to compete was the point of law, The mandates of the liberal state were flawed, Late 60s craziness stuck in my craw. Paul was sincere, we may assume.  Was I? Was my faith always partial, mixed, and wry?   

In my lucky land, I do a heel turn, I'm a wrestling villain in crimson tights, My moves help make the Keynesian wheel turn, Friedman's our headliner, his name's in lights. The people who run the show are in shock, Gorgeous George is headlocked by George Stigler! We're bad geeks destined to lose to the Rock, Ronald Dworkin's The Man, I'm The Wriggler. The show-runners retain some of their pow'r, In law schools we're a small minority, But we're rising, it's the Chicago hour, In elections we're the majority. I can take all their moral sticks and stones, I like my side's chances, let's roll dem bones. ,

Posner, from Poznan, is just a person, Richard, from the West Side, is a rich rad, I'm abstract and particular, verse 'n     prose, happy, angry, and calm, but not sad. Rich rad person applies to Blanche and Max, My high chair was a liberal limousine, They fed me with great books instead of snacks, Henry James was inside my soup tureen. Shuffled up, my childhood could have been dire, Chelmno was near the city of my name, My mother led me to the sacred fire, To Homer, away from her old home's shame. Thanks to them both, I've had a lucky life, Playing with words, wielding Occam's sharp knife.