by Geoffrey Bower (Ph.D. 1997)

(with apologies to Allen Ginsberg)

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by Sparc 20s, starving 
        hysterical, naked, 
dragging themselves through Berkeley streets at dawn for veggie burritos, 
Angel headed hipsters searching for the ancient heavenly connection to 
        the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, 
who went from Lick to Keck to Hat Creek and back to Lick, 
who proposed to NASA, NSF, IAU but never NEA, 
who communed with the holy and cordial Shu Arons McKee Davis Silk Theory Mind 
        on matters celestial, 
who read ApJ articles until the print smeared onto their hands and they ate 
       the paper itself to be free, 
who fedexed and faxed and snail- and e-mailed preprints to every continent and 
        flashed their Super Mongo plots by overhead in the company of 
        the Establishment, 
who bent machines into the shape of the universe and gave away the answer, 
who talked talked talked in cars in cafes in offices with open doors, 
who knew IRAF from IRAS and aped AIPS in this apiary on a high hill, no drones, 
        all queens in this honeycomb, 
who sought lighthouses on degenerate shoals and saw lenses in lenses, 
who -- this actually happened -- turned their eyes into darkness and 
        saw an icy stone eaten by the gods, 
who left it all for an afternoon on bicycles until they thought their lungs 
        would burst, knees explode, and they saw the San Francisco Bay 
        vibrate at their feet, 
who drank coffee for 36 hours straight until they had visions of a new 
        Sun and a new Earth, 
alas, C.R., secret hero of these poems, while you are not graduated, I 
        am not graduated.
I am with you in Berkeley, 
        where you're madder than I am 
I am with you in Berkeley, 
        where you must feel very strange 
I am with you in Berkeley, 
        where you write Chapter One for the eighteenth time 
I am with you in Berkeley, 
        where you debate Emacs/vi with a mad jazz man 
I am with you in Berkeley, 
        where the ApJ stalagmites tower over you 
I am with you in Berkeley, 
        where the elevators run very slowly 
I am with you in Berkeley, 
        where the Cosmic Gardener grows her tomatoes and the Evil Librarian 
        tends his books 
I am with you in Berkeley, 
        where in my dreams you walk - thesis in hand - out the doors of 
        Campbell Hall.