Law

ROBERT COHEN

LAW

What the zoth Century was like

When you spend so much time with plants, you must find

humans strange

often this sadist would sit, moaning

His mother and father would visit him when he was sick

discovery of laws governing the sweetness of her kiss

and then around 1964, I had decided on a scientific career

the light passing through so many "repeats"

On the table is a small plant, a coleus, I watched it grow from

a seed

We strip our bodies free of clothing, we wander through our

cities talking to citizens

What would "I think" mean, based on some unknown

experience

like sun-reflected-on-the-droplets-of-water-adhering-to-a-

swimmer's-chest

The world is somehow secured

but history is not a complaint, and naturally arises in this way:

The idea of a comprehensive awareness in a being with senses

136 senses, 12 sexes, 350 years of memories, o

let me make a loose analogy

Suppose you were somehow secured*

A fox in time of oppression you must be, says Mao

It is all connected, and continuous, but I forget!

No matter how many mornings I'm born into, I'm not going

to forget!

witness the extraordinary persistence of plants

on a table. ...

The seed, a criticism of assigning experiences to myself

* Cf. the old man in Arkansas whose roof didn't leak when it didn't

rain.

implies navigation at night before the invention of the sextant,

you are

vice-president in charge of getting us there

I will be in charge of owing our existence to some fluke, and

You will be in charge of the conditions for making our assertions

intelligible

to the citizens of a thousand planets

When you spend so much time as humans, this lottery, I mean

that

even seeing the whole is seeing just a part,

which is the sum-total of seeing all the parts!