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The Legal Studies Forum
Volume 30, Number 1/2 (2006) reprinted by permission Legal Studies Forum Lawyers & Poets Scenes | | Dreams RICHARD FALK _________________ Dreaming II Dream much-see little Dream too little-see too much This world full of death So empty of spirit when clowns weep Laughter seems morbid on killing fields Eerie silences fill the air lies spoken and broken Bittersweet words from our heroes "I prefer life to medals of dishonor" a soldier numbed by memories dreams that stir among warriors I walk past gardens of flaming flowers dazed by my hopes for rainbows still obsessed by far horizons A litany of hopeless hopes fading in this autumn world [731]
Princeton Famous feet walk these streets Gentle with pride dapper with dreams Mostly men design lives of wealth power Chapel required orgies permitted (on weekends) Perverted normalcy bright shining lies Admirable feet walked these streets Einstein so beyond the others Fitzgerald Kennan Madison Wilson Lonely in their fame and service As the sun rose a new Princeton Jews women blacks Eating clubs flirt with democracy Cornel West-Toni Morrison The oaks grow taller we all grow older Militarists come and go Money ambition status There is still the old Princeton Woodrow Wilson's footprint on Nassau Street His iron fence around Prospect a mystery To keep his daughters in or their suitors out A man of the world so surely strange Are we to rule the world or make perpetual peace? I return shyly to this Princeton its fame and fortune A familiar stranger now ever at the margins Standing in shadow lands of privilege forty years Walking daily past Henry Moore David Smith's statues Forty years I was a privileged outsider Blessed now with dimming memories I relive the glory of my return Seen through a peephole awestruck by unspoken joy [732]
Humanity I ask myself about humanity as I watch processions of those escaping death despair in places of great darkness Baghdad New Orleans Darfur names that conjure evil misery disaster. I listen closer now to honking geese streak their warnings across an angered sky. I ask myself about fathers and mothers who disable their own children breaking arms and legs sending a broken child forth to serve the begging Mafia. And about these smiling poor girls who dream and go off to distant lands for jobs husbands mutant promises and obscene ordeals. We are told of humanity love and goodness blessed with soul and spirit how evil is nothing but ignorance of wayward motion. A new moon rises a child of the sky birds serenade dawn waves beat against the shore. But then a wind blows up from no where coloring the sky with black clouds And I shudder at the sound-humanity. [733]
Richard A. Falk received his law degree from Yale Law School, and a J.S.D. degree from Harvard Law School. Between 1955 and 1961 he taught at the College of Law at Ohio State University and from 1961 to 2001 was on the faculty at Princeton University. He was appointed the Albert G. Milbank Professor of International Law and Practice at Princeton in 1965. In 2002 he became Visiting Professor of Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Over the years he has appeared in many cases as an expert witness on international law issues. His most recent books include: The Declining World Order: America's Imperial Geopolitics (Routledge, 2004), The Record of the Paper: How the New York Times Misreports U.S. Foreign Policy (Verso, 2004)(with Howard Friel), The Great Terror War (Olive Branch Press, 2003), Human Rights Horizons: The Pursuit of Justice in a Globalizing World (Routledge, 2001), and Law in an Emerging Global Village: A Post-Westphalian Perspective (Transnational Publishers, 1999). |
