Jamail Center for Legal Research
Tarlton Law Library

Fairy Tale-1945

In the fabled land of the Brothers Grimm
each townsman in the town I'm in
on oath holds up his hand to swear
in answer to our questionnaire:

"No one here has been a member
of the National Socialist party,
no swastika floated down
from a rooftop in this fairy town,
forgotten ghosts soon disappear
in the gemutlich foam of evening beer.
Our hausfraus sweep each spotless stoop,
our men bring in the winter logs
our dogs bring in the sheep to shear,
our frauleins smile up at you
as if you were a prince its's said
with a kiss to wake the princess
from her fairy tale bed."

But fear stole in and bequeathed to me
its cold remembered touch.
In a post card town like this
I sat my buddy up to breathe
with eyes that mirrored my stricken face.
"I can't believe . . ." he said
as mouth agape in wonderment, he bled.

I heard the secret murmur of his blood.
He raised one hand in disbelief
then carefully put it down.
His eyes became two crystal globes,
his fear like snowflakes drifted down
until all became opaque.

You know-the kind of globe
and snow
that in fairy tales sift down
upon a dreaming peaceful town?

Yenta

Who would think of this,
I mean really believe that I
from where I came, who I am- 
from an apartment house in Brooklyn
would be called in like a queen
to the White House yet,
the Marriage Secretariat, so help me God
it's like a dream!

My new title is a Counselor
before, they called me "yenta,"
when I knocked on any door
the question was "who sent' ya?"

As a matchmaker, a dollar here and there
I negotiated my commission
by arranging an audition for
some old schlemiel who sought a spouse
and vice verse for some poor mouse
still looking for a troubadour.

To tell the truth it was no easy job
the good looking ones were slob or snob
I'm half detective and half librarian
I can guess at once if they'll be marryin.

In recognition of my artistry
the bureaucrats have hired me
and sent me back to my own street
with Bush's how to do it sheet.

So here I am where I began
doing my thing for Uncle Sam
teaching that marriage is most effectual
so long as its only heterosexual.

Informed Consent

Three times they urged that Job relent
from contending with Authority and to assent
to the punishment that's heaven sent
and cease his arrogant argument.

Three times an MD glaring down at me
demanded my Informed Consent
though no one knew just what it meant
as they laid me on the gurney.

It's only legalese he said
which explains the curious details
of the unforeseen things we dread
if the operation fails.

I claimed that as a member of the bar
I learned to parse each jot and tittle
it's far beyond my repertoire
to uncode this Rubick's Riddle.

The alarm lights flashed code yellow
as masked and gowned in astonishment
they rushed in to see the fellow
who thrice refused advance consent.

And kneeled as in my hospital shroud
like Lazarus I rose and went
amongst the kneeling angry crowd
demanding my just punishment.

But the mighty voice of the Chief of Staff
poured from speakers in the corridor
shaking for miles around each seismograph
as he roared this cosmic order:

"Wherefore find you this procedure, this protocol
that subjects this man to mute assent
whom I gave the gift to stand or fall
of his own free will without consent?

Let him write his own biography 
though unable to foretell
whether solemn script or comedy
or when I toll the bell."

Ozymandias and Me

I was told by my physician
that in addition to my shrinking frame
the obvious root of my condition
is just old age, nature's end game,
a pre planned piece meal demolition,
where an outside crew peels off the skin
and an inside crew brings from within
parts prized high since puberty
and now reduced to loose debris.

I'd dreamt that like Ozymandias
whose kingly parts evoked his past,
another Keats might now proclaim
that mine were parts that looked the same,
but who would pause, who pass me by,
where only shards of grandeur lie
beneath my spindly scaffolds fall
old remnants of a wrecking ball?

Dysnomia

My fishing line reels out and drifts
through descending depths of consciousness
while the dangling bait of memory's weight
succeeds no more than Sisyphus.

I jiggle the line until it's tight
to whet the fish's appetite
but the water's black
and the line goes slack
as line and bait both sink from sight.

To bottom fish your memory
is like counting your assets in bankruptcy
where the referee
accepts no plea
until he's convinced of complete poverty.

But ultimately the pole is bent
with no more warning than an accident
and the water clears
as the fish appears
wriggling on the hook in astonishment.

Like Hemingway's fisherman sailing for home
I head for the harbor to finish my poem
I now have a fish that was netted in time
for me to drop anchor with this ending rhyme.

The Trial of Joshua (a/k/a Jesus)

May it please the Court of History
which has no statute of limitations.
May it please the lawyers born after me
to cease their recriminations.

Let me set the record straight:
The defendant would not cooperate
so the Saducees and Pharisees
released each others throat
and conceived a secret strategy
in which I was the goat.

It was not yet dawn, not yet cock's crow
when they brought the Nazarene within
the High court of the Senhedrin
to begin the ordained show.

He was a Rabbi from up the Galilee,
a blue-collar guy that did carpentry
charged with multiple counts of apostacy.
He refused to enter a guilty plea.

Though I'd never tried a capital case,
nor had I ever seen my client 
or prepared for use a habeas
or examined an affiant
the High Priest pulled me from the crowd-
the other lawyers laughed aloud
when Caiaphas appointed me
as the indigent's attorney.

In my innocence and youthful pride
I announced I'm glad to take his side
but since this comes as a surprise
I move for time to strategize.

"Motion denied,"
the High Priest said, and then
"Let the scribe take up his pen.

Show this hearing has begun.  Amen."

[488]

[Here follows the verbatim Transcript of the trial of the 
defendant Joshua a/k/a among certain of the Jews as Jesus.]

A:   (Defense Attorney):  Your honor, I again move for continuance and release from jail by fixing bail on my client's own recognizance.

HP:   (Caiaphus):  Denied.  what is your plea?
Guilty or not guilty?

A:  I cannot agree to enter a plea.
You invite my dereliction.
To do otherwise I'd be criticized
for conceding jurisdiction.
For since this case is a capital case
and my client's home is Galilee
I cite to you clear precedent
that only where he's resident
does a court have authority.

HP:  Are you unaware that we sent him there
for a hearing at his domicile
and he was remitted back for trial?

A:  I ask the court to enlighten me.
How came this all to be?

HP: Because Herod after due inquiry,
proposed to find him not guilty
and returned him with an apology.

A:  But wait!  This is an absurdity!
This trial is double jeopardy!
I move dismissal immediately!

HP: Dear counsel you mistake the rule
that's taught to you in your law school.
The governor acted administratively,
no act was taken by the judiciary.

A:  Oh now the shroud of night has disappeared!
What I had feared has now appeared
in daytime's clarity!

I will not ask we suffer through
another useless hour or two
but will make my points with brevity
and pray for Pilate's fair review.

HP: I commend you for your diligence.
I'll ignore your clear impertinence.
So none who are here may then report
your client lacked his day in court,
proceed.

A:  I enter the following motions:
First, the Senhedrin is short a quorum.
Such rule is not a pendulum that one may halt if
troublesome.
Next, I seek a change from here to a venue with an
atmosphere
that's free of fear,
where no drummed-up crowd 
outside the gate
stands howling for a flagellate.

HP: Young man, I hold you in contempt.
I'll reserve for you your punishment.
Defendant, now approach 
the bench.
Long enough have you been silent.
I will put to you one question-
one question only-
and before the 
sun shines in the east
I command that you shall answer me.

[Scribe:  The defendant does not answer.]

HP:  I adjure thee by the living God, that
thou tellist whether thou be
Christ, the son of God.

Defendant:  Thou has said: nevertheless I say
unto you, Hereafter shall ye see
the Son of Man 
sitting on the right hand of power
and coming in the clouds of heaven.

HP: What further need have we of witnesses?
There is no ambiguity.
Behold, we have heard his blasphemy.
This man walks free upon the earth
with those who claim his virgin birth
and proclaim his immortality.
He is a danger to the state. 
I find that he is guilty.

A:  Wait!  Do you not see?
unwittingly, for his offense
he has offered up his own defense!
This man, from a dysfunctional family,
is acting out a fantasy.
I enter here a plea
of his diminished capacity!

HP: Denied, denied!  Thrice denied!
You have no right to flout the court
and turn his answer inside out.
Shall I then question him again?

A:  You mock me, sir,
we need no interrogator.
Under the doctrine of res ispa loquitor
his words speak for themselves.

HP: Scribe:  This trial is at its end.
I will certify the record now and send
him on to Pilate.  I recommend
the penalty he seeks so ardently.

[The Transcript ends.]

Enchained, they led him out the gate.
As though rehearsed, the crowd disbursed.

Exposed as a novitiate
who'd failed his final test
my colleagues looked away from me
and left with all the rest.

It was then I knew I'd been a pawn
on the chessboard of this consistory,
but tell me the truth, I if had won,
would it change the course of history?
If my client survived, if I'd set him free,
would it have made any difference to you or me?

For if looking back from your century
the lives we led remained the same,
the fears, the hopes, brutality,
you must conclude I bear no blame.

But if the meaning of this decree
gives hope for an eternal amnesty
my conclusion's the same,
it would be error to defame
the lawyer who lost in Jerusalem.

Note: "The Trial of Joshua." As an aid to non-lawyers who may stumble upon this poem at some future time, some of the legal concepts and language may be helpful. Thus:  a plea of any kind by the defendant may waive jurisdictional requirements. A "recognizance" is a document permitting release pending arraignment or trial upon a person's signature. The residential requirements for capital cases were fixed by Roman law. An administrative hearing is not usually deemed a substitute for the judicial hearing which may trigger a later defense of double jeopardy. The procedural requirement of a quorum (as is the continuing quarrel between the battling religious factions of Sadducees and Pharisees) is described in The Dartmouth Bible (Chamberlin and Feldman eds., 3rd ed.)(the source for many aspects of the poem). The inquiry of the Defendant and his response is taken verbatim from Epistles, 26:64 Matthew. The plea of diminished capacity is a recognized defense in many state criminal codes. "Res ipsa loquitor" means "the thing speaks for itself." Insertion of a defense counsel is my own invention. You will not find one in the Bible. Trust me. And the reader himself must, of course, answer the ultimate question posed.
Finally, the poem was originally conceived as a very short play presented by more than one actor.

Marseilles Harbor-1945

Near the harbor we pronounced "Marsays"
loaded with shit and bouillabaisse
we lie on cots and wait
a hundred to a tent for transport to
the land of the little yellow man.
It's 1945, an inauspicious year
except for the end of World War Two,
with nothing to do but read
"Stars and Stripes" which proclaimed the party line
that we'd be home for Christmas,
to which we'd add "in 1949."
We'd watch the trucks each day
pull into camp and on each ramp
disgorge their load
of whores and spam and cigarettes,
as the MP's looked away,
and lay big money bets
as to who would be the last to come
when the whores would finish in the tents.

Our sergeant was called Humpty Dumpty.
He weighed 300 pounds.
Riddled by shrapnel in the Ardennes
the medics put Humpty together again
except for  the fact that with no one around
at any loud noise he'd command "hit the ground."

At mail call our corporal
would mispronounce each foreign name.
In the tent an endless poker game
continued through the night
in the beam of a hand held flashlight.
On a weekend pass at the compound gate 
the husky French grisettes would wait
to trade their francs for cigarettes.
If we had a pass we'd take a cab
to the hills above the city,
a universe away,
above the small cafes that fringed the bay,
inhaled the sweet aroma
of mimosa trees in bloom

from which we squeezed
our own perfume of homeland memories.

The darkening sky accompanied us
upon our slow descent
fearful of what awaited us 
beyond the compound tent . . . 

*   *   *

It was August 7th, 1945.
At night chaplains arrived.
We stood in separate groups,
each a different faith, to contemplate
what man and God contrived.
Our young rabbi bowed his head to pray
and silently wept as though his tears
would quench the fires
that burnt the heart
of victim and victor alike,
then wonderingly looked up at us
and wordless walked away.

A Decalogue Society

Before time began, within the limitless ambient
there was the Word, existing eternally,
encompassing unformed ocean, sky and fundament,
a void of wonderment and mystery.

Within itself the Word contained
man's bloody fate by tooth and claw
but promised life if man maintained
subjection to the rule of Law,

To the "I Am That I Am" of the burning bush,
to the Code in the books of the Pentateuch
condensed in ten words of the homologue
given Jacob's tribe by the Decalogue.

We inherit an ancient metaphor
a dangerous tool that's razor edged
forged in a fire that we have pledged 
to feed by the fuel of reason.

But truth may be obscured by metaphor,
or the shifting winds of the season,
and laws which shape our identity
may be the voice of a new ventriloquy
and we the dummy on the knee.

Awake!  the Prophets say, reaffirm our Covenant
of justice, truth, humility;
these are the goals of our society
this what the Word has meant.

Over Olympus

I rode the wild steed of poetry last night.
It raced beyond our galaxy 
In the ecstasy of endless flight
Beyond the pull of gravity,

Untamed, it soars within
the clouds, across the sunlit poles,
where endless parallel's begin, 
to unplumbed depths of souls.

No rope or noose
Can bind or halt this unreigned force
Nor can the mind that turned it loose
Confine it to a chosen course.

Strange voices borne up to me
On roaring winds of the Antipodes
Reveal the human mystery.
I grip my steed with trembling knees.

On Olympus, home of Gods, Zeus waits,
As he waited for Belepherone
To end my ride with thunderbolts,
And bring me crashing down to earth.

Paul Homer served during World War II in an armored reconnaissance battalion in the European theater. He returned to the University of Chicago for his undergraduate degree and his J.D. from Northwestern University. He became a member of the bar in 1951, and in 1986 joined the firm Piper Rudnick as a partner in their Chicago office, where he continues to practice business, tax, real estate and commercial law and litigation. He has lectured and written on diverse legal subjects and has received awards from the Chicago Bar Association for pro bono legal service at a neighborhood legal service clinic for the indigent (where he is now President Emeritus) and for Chicago Planned Parenthood Association. He began writing poetry in 2002.  A substantial selection of his poems were featured in the Legal Studies Forum poetry anthology, Off the Record: An Anthology of Poetry by Lawyers (2004). His first collection of poems, Neighborhood Legends & Other Poems was published in 2004. The poems which appear here have not been previously published.