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The Legal Studies Forum
Volume 30, Number 1/2 (2006) reprinted by permission Legal Studies Forum Lawyers & Poets Far Travels DAVID R. DOW ________________________ The Night Before the Morning — for I.G. On the night before the morning That the doctor called to tell me The tumors had spread I dreamed that The cancer cells were the German Army finally retreating From the futile effort to take Leningrad and I was about To wake you to tell you that I Had wonderful news when the phone's Ring stole me from my reverie And the doctor said that he was Sorry for calling so early And for having to report that There was just nothing left to do. On the night before that morning Remember how we watched the blue Sky gradually fade to black And for a moment the sky seemed To press closer to earth and to Cover us like a gossamer. Remember how for that moment The sky was empty of its stars And we huddled there eyes upward Searching together for heaven Until first Venus followed by Jupiter appeared and I pulled You nearer to me and pointed To the silver sliver of moon Which hung low in the icy sky. On a night like that night only Fourteen months ago you noticed [427]
A flickering star and asked me How far it was and I said I Think that's Pollux and it's forty Trillion miles away and you said (Do you remember?) Pollux is An ugly word and you renamed it. So tonight while you slept I found Our star again and sat down to Calculate how many years its Light had been spiraling through the Universe searching out my eyes Except that now that it has found Them I am no longer who I Was on that night you named it or Who I was even yesterday When we kissed for the tumor is Clamping down on the vessel that Brings oxygen to my riddled Brain and what happens is that thoughts I do not recognize as my Own crowd out the familiar Idea of me and that must Finally be the end of me. On the night before the morning Forty trillion miles from its world And forty years later your star's Light struck my eyes yet once again Forty years after the day our World was born when I held you and Made a promise to you that I Would be here with you, forever. [428]
Mourning in Carolina Summertime hail pellets the size of sweet peas Ping off the rusty metal roof of the twenty By twenty foot cabin where I've come to mourn You at the top of the tallest mountain at Carolina's Farthest western edge. Atonal vibrations beneath The surface of my skin are a warning from the warring Wavelengths of my being that I can't be cancelled out, For now. I do not want to die I just want to feel Like I want to. At my feet the Doberman bitch nurses Four three day old orange kittens whose mother died Birthing them. The storm stops as sudden as a fish dart, And the dog pushes the kittens off her teat, nudging them With her snout onto a pile of hay beneath the cast iron Wood stove. Through a wink in the clouds over Tennessee I can see Saturn and Venus dancing their figure eight. Overhead I think I spot Polaris then realize that four Hundred generations from now the earth's wobble means That Polaris won't be the north star anymore anyway And somehow that thought comforts me. Mist is rising From the creek where it's time for me to go catch breakfast For the dog. She raises her head and looks at me: Heavy lidded and expectant, forlorn and wise. If the puppies Come today I hope I won't have to shoot the kittens. [429]
Euclidean Mergings Archimedes moved from Syracuse to Alexandria And rented the flat Where Euclid had lived and discovered the Truth that God wanted To keep hidden deep Inside the human brain where a cluster Of cells half the size Of a pinhead does Nothing but store every memory You have ever had In luminous and Flawless detail waiting to play them back In the cold nano Second between the Fact of death and the awareness of it. Euclid wrested the secret from himself In the dream where he Reached into his head With two gold toothpicks and speared five simple Axioms plus five Common notions and Woke and began combining them into Everything that There is except for The single thing he most needed to know. Too awed to sleep in the presence of the Immortal spirit Archimedes sat Contemplating whether anything more Could be said when he Heard a voice within And found Euclid in his library at Work by a dripless Candle talking in A language that he did not understand And on the table Archimedes saw An elliptic sphere and gasped with certain [430]
Recognition and A startled Euclid Looked up as if to speak but instead stepped Through the wall into Space leaving behind The sphere on the surface of which he had Drawn intersecting Parallel lines and Next to which lay a notebook where he had Scrawled solutions to Problems that were not Yet invented which some take to be a Sign of madness but Archimedes knew To be proof that this is not all there is. At the edge of the universe he wrote There is a place I Have been between the Present and the past and between the here And the beyond and There all lines are round And there all edges are smooth and when I Am there every Mystery yields but One and all there is is not enough to Explain how any Element can be Made into any other but a cold Heart will never be Warm and no man Will ever be anything he is not. Here he said is proof. Take it as you will: If you were to take This piece of paper And fold it thus and so twisting the long Axis one hundred And eighty degrees And attaching one end to the other No longer would there Be an inside or An outside because the two sides would merge [431]
And what would remain Would not be a side At all because it would be all there is. This perfection lies In two dimensions Or even four but not in three where the Good is yet confused With the desired, Where to be alone with you is enough. [432]
David R. Dow is professor of law at the University of Houston Law Center, where he teaches and writes in the areas of constitutional law and theory, death penalty law, and contracts. He has represented more than forty death row inmates in state and federal habeas corpus appeals, and is the founder and director of the Texas Innocence Network. His most recent book is Executed on a Technicality: Lethal Injustice on America's Death Row (Beacon Press, 2005). "The Night Before the Morning" was previously published in The Advocate, "Mourning in Carolina" previously appeared in the Houston Poetry Fest 2000: Anthology (Southwest Literary Arts Council, 2000), and "Euclidean Mergings" appeared in Gulf Coast. |
