YouLoveMe

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.

The one son who appears the same as me       has a very different disposition, The son whose seed blew far from the tree      has his father's taste for cool sedition. They have formed me as much as I've formed them, My wife formed us all, made us into men      who can parse a line but not sew a hem, Our now reforms and is formed by our then. With neither have I ever raised my voice.  With my wife--well, that's a diff'rent story, I told them both that anger is a choice, That cars pose risks commonplace and gory. They lived in the unheavenly city, They made it marginally more pretty.

I was relieved that she'd finally gone quiet,  That she didn't have political views, That she didn't worry about my diet, That she didn't rage at the morning news. Tough-minded hard-headed Max became frail, He doted on Blanche, stroked her like a cat, He asked me once, should they put me in jail      for my loans?   Outside, he put on a hat. Why shouldn't I put them both in a zoo       and charge people a dollar to see 'em? I won't, I'm ruled by convention, it's true, They are monkeys now, I'll one day be 'em. Should I get a case of elder abuse, I will have a bent to find an excuse.