Kevin Cawley<\/p>\n
Been having dreams in which my dolls address me,
\ndummies hardly dumb, their wooden traps
\nagape with contradiction. In my act
\nI make them speak the patter I’ve invented —
\nSocrates a recapitulation
\nof Plato’s more amusing dialogues,
\nGalileo in his modern role,
\ngreat scientist against the Inquisition,
\nDarwin a durable hero, Freud the final
\nword in psychological penetration.
\nEncapsulating history in comics,
\ncolorful gridlock, wisdom in balloons,
\nmy version of the past reduces them
\nto entertaining forebears of the present
\nsuperior to their contemporaries
\nby virtue of resemblance to ourselves:
\nFreud the friend of sexual self-indulgence,
\nDarwin the man who made God obsolete,
\nGalileo’s love of liberties,
\nSocratic method and the rights of gays.<\/p>\n
But in my nightmares how confused they seem!
\nFreud complains the world misunderstands him,
\nshows me a nine-floor tower filled with books:
\nFreud’s Religion, Freud’s Philosophy,
\nFreudian Tips on Gardening Indoors,
\nmillions of titles on every conceivable topic.
\nWe climb a winding staircase, floor by floor,
\npull down some books at random, open up
\nthe fat ones and the thin ones, folios,
\noctavos, quartos, duodecimos,
\nall masterworks of individual craft
\nlovingly bound by hand in human skin
\nand every typeface different. But the text,
\nno matter what the title, always says,
\n“Sex explains it: scientific sex.”
\nUltimately we reach the tower’s roof.
\nMountains west, a river to the east,
\nfarms to the south, a city to the north.
\nOn all four sides I look straight down the walls
\nand nowhere does the tower have a door.<\/p>\n
I see a volume balanced on the edge.
\n“Freudian Ventriloquism” — author?
\nMe. My name in gold leaf on the spine.
\nThe text? More sex. More scientific sex.
\n“How do things work? How do things fit together?”
\nThe voice of Darwin or the voice of Freud?
\nI turn to look and find myself on deck
\na sailing ship, its prow a beagle-snout.
\nThe simian dummy Darwin has addressed me.
\nHe sweeps his arm to emphasize the question,
\nindicates the animals on board:
\ndodos, giant turtles, kangaroos,
\nplatypuses, bison, tiny flies,
\nan ark of oddities. Darwin sneezes.
\n“Where did the future come from?” he inquires.
\n“When will the past begin?” My nausea
\npropels me to the railing where I find
\nthe dummy Galileo dropping mammals
\noverboard to see how fast they fall.
\nThe ship heels and becomes a leaning tower:<\/p>\n
I see my book on Freud slip off the edge.
\nIt falls beside an otter and they hit
\nthe river at exactly the same time.
\nThe otter swims away. The book pursues it
\nlustily with one thing on its mind.
\nI lose my balance, start to fall, and hear
\n(the voice of Socrates or Galileo?)
\n“How do things work? How do things fit together?”
\nI’m swimming beside a Socrates in drag.
\nShe hugs me from behind and hauls me over,
\nstrong despite resistance, to the shore.
\n“Tell me, have you ever asked a question?”
\nI blink at her. I don’t know what she means.
\n“Have you ever wondered how Xanthippe
\nfelt about her husband’s peccadilloes?”
\n“Consider the cultural milieu of ancient Greece . . .”
\nShe cuts my lecture short. “Does ancient grease
\ndo anything but harden in the pan?”<\/p>\n
Then all the animals that Galileo
\ndropped from the tower gather in a circle
\nwith me and Mrs. Socrates inside it.
\n“The Great God Pan has died,” they sing together.
\n“Don’t panic. If you panic he will rise,
\na tidal river coursing in reverse
\nthat overflows its banks and drowns the city.”
\nI panic and the river pulls me under.
\nNo Socrates to save me now, no question:
\ngood as dead. I never learned to swim.
\nBut then the sun comes up, the river dries,
\na voice I’ve never heard says “Only vapor.”
\nOther voices, voices I’ve invented,
\ngather near me now and form a chorus,
\nSocrates, Galileo, Darwin, Freud
\nsing “Praise the Sun and penetrate the vapor.”
\nBut I myself can’t sing. I have no tongue.
\nWhat does it mean? How does it fit together?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kevin Cawley Been having dreams in which my dolls address me, dummies hardly dumb, their wooden traps agape with contradiction. In my act I make them speak the patter I’ve invented — Socrates a recapitulation of Plato’s more amusing dialogues, Galileo in his modern role, great scientist against the Inquisition, Darwin a durable hero, Freud […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5084,"featured_media":0,"parent":41,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-102","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/wcawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/wcawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/wcawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/wcawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5084"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/wcawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/wcawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/wcawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/102\/revisions\/103"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/wcawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/41"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/wcawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}