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Sperm CountAuthor(s): Jim HallSource: The North American Review, Vol. 268, No. 1 (Mar., 1983), p. 63Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25124386 .

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helped energize and integrate civil izations scattered over the earth, no

longer function to bring order and re

sponsible participation to the single planetary culture of our shrinking

world. Those myths no longer offer an image of the universe in keeping

with the knowledge of our time. The mnemonic function of the cave art in

a time of information overload has been replaced by computers. It may be that our youthful initiates gain some kind of mystical experience as

they stand mesmerized in front of a Pac-Man machine, but I question

whether this puts them in touch with a mystery dimension of the universe

and themselves.

The fine contribution of Pfeiffer's book is its new enlivenment of the

Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon past. To enhance our understanding and

respect for humans we once consid

ered barbaric savages is to extend our sense of the lifeline of human con sciousness. The farther back we can

experience our roots, the greater the

possibility we have for envisioning the future. When we can equate our

own efforts at survival with those of

people like us 30,000 years ago, it can

give us a perspective at once humb

ling and inspirational. I applaud Pfeiffer's call for an interdisciplinary team of a zoologist, artist, psychol

ogist, dancer, architect, dramatist,

and acoustical engineer to probe (de

licately) the cave art's functions and

meanings. The richer our under

standing, the stronger our sense of

continuity with, and the creative po

tential of the human family. Our very ability to observe the past in a sense

creates the future. ?Loree Rackstraw

JIM HALL

SPERM COUNT

On the bright slide a thousand

of them squiggle. Some set off

for the edge of this flat world, some spin in a frenzy as if they know

this isn't where they were meant to be.

And there are the dead ones,

the two-headed or tailless ones.

The jig is up for them.

No marathon swim. No happy cry: I'm here! Look what I've brought!

What are we anyway

if it can all be sent in one

microscopic slithering? I have, as I peer at a thousand versions

of myself, every conceivable predictable

response. I am clearly more than

anything one of them can deliver.

I side with the two-headed ones.

They, at least, had some new idea.

When later I am home and cleaning out

old trunks, old letters, scraps of

writing, things I can't bear to read

or part with, things that have swum

as far as they can and have come to

nothing, I think again of the ones

that finally make it.

They would be the very ones

I would never have as friends:

dogged, mean enough to bump their twins aside.

The will to wriggle up the last hostile twist

of tube. The blind brutal ignorance to believe

the message that they carry

should be passed on at all.

63

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