Human Genome (1)

The Human Genome is a book that can read itself - transcribing genes, copying, editing, translating. DNA copied into Messenger RNA…Transfer RNA – genes to acids to proteins. Codes and symbols becoming hair and teeth - skin, wings, kisses. A magical factory of words and chemicals still writing and editing itself after four billion years of Evolution. Letter, word, language, message and dictionary, understood by all living things - bird to man, lizard to man, fish to man. Fly, tiger, owl, worm and Polar Bear. That being heard makes hands and eyes; fur, claw, egg and tongue - reading themselves into existence. It is the book of life. A book that wrote itself. That writes itself; is writing, always. A book where the author is at once the book. In sublime biological creativity, it is the poetry of existence. The art of chemistry. Potential, script and means of organic expression; of life. The calling and creation of materials out of darkness. The Human Genome is a poem.

‘In a sense, human flesh is made of stardust.’ Nigel Calder, the Key to the Universe, BBC, 1977

‘Looking back from the present, the genome seems immortal. An unbroken chain of descent links the very first ur-gene with the genes active in your body now – an unbroken chain of perhaps fifty billion copyings over four billion years.’ Matt Ridley, Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, Fourth Estate, 2000

‘The organism is both the weaver and the pattern it weaves, the choreographer and the dance that is danced.’ Steven Rose, Lifelines: Biology, Freedom and Determinism, 1997


The Human Genome (1)


The Human Genome is a poem,
conjured syllable by syllable -

from light, water, earth -
such agonising millennia

for the red word of the heart;
rehearsing skin with lilies -

learning body from amoebae,
coagulation of a scripted cell,

through worm and fish,
lizard, bird and shrew –

to the last iris crinkle, hair scale,
spiral print at the tip of a finger -

a billion years to write the eye
from flowers’ pupil-mouths -

star-bone hands from leaf palms -
define pterodactyl wings to fingers;

achingly dyeing first seas, water,
into mysteries of blood and tears.


The Human Genome is Chemistry’s art
and power; life her hooked embroidery,

absolute poem of our communal origin -
creative drive, expression. Symphonious,

honed beyond words; pruned to letter,
sound - profound dessication of being

to what can be -
watered with life.

Boneless poem skeleton;
the stripped poem soul -

shivering like a naked map of stars,
jittery firefly sequence - unprinted.

Brushing the hedgerow
with a casual hazel stick

blanks a million pages
of life’s poetry realised -

each torn Briar Rose, confetti’ed
from her broken hinges, snowing,

took an age and then another age
to write - water dreaming petals.

Each silver fly wing crushed,
such a shattering of miracles;

shining wing glass delicately paned,
smelted from the elements of stars -

polished since original light,
gravity’s peculiar invention -

is a small window in the cathedral
of natural time, telling epic stories;

every geometry of this ruined web
was knitted by the artistry of time -

in sticky script, each silver thread
embroidered by the gifted spider -

this broken grasshopper was Physics’
singing child - her ramshackle rickle

of straw bones were living, brittle
calculations of ascent - parabolic

dramas on chlorophyll fuel; sprung
limb music of her sacrificial wings.


Molecules drafted through millennia,
coagulating endless dreams of water;

Chemistry’s infinite creative palette
sampling light and elements, script -

each hard-brained tight bramble
bouncing greenly, prematurely

to the fruitful morgue of earth,
rots still dreaming purple sugar,

staining blood plumping sweet;
bellyfuls of sun, seed, beak, lip -

bursting into mouth, gut or earth;
handfuls of black-eyed children -

dandelion suns, beheaded as aristocrats,
lion-shorn - still imagine symbiotic air

lifting their lost materials,
on round, star-hair wings.


The shape of the Genome poem
is scattered stars; a twinkling net

of orchestrated switches, illuminating
a man among the bundled prints Life

has already called from the darkness
over four billion years - an unbroken

poem of organic existence; a continuous
music played in flesh, without conductor

or general. Self harmonising, commanding
as the compelling orders of love - weaving

skin on scaffold bones built from water,
like shells, urchins - starfish into hands;

an entire organic future in one cell,
authored by the means of creation.


The sound is the opening of a hand,
that waving white star in the womb

of dreaming blackness; whole volumes
of latent life written at the heart of dark

Universe - spy-writing in invisible ink;
in shades of silver never yet seen in art

or chemistry - if light were liquid,
but not yet lit; or breath of a stone,

dimly blue, promising somehow a heart
from a handful of dust - fabulous intent.


The light of the Genome poem is eyes -
hothouses of soul, plastic organic glass;

her accomplishment that must shine -
whose nature is built of cultured light;

her root the metred heart, red root,
where love waits like a gardener -

rose and plum muscle, metaphorical
metronome; ignition - burning pump.


The writing of the Genome poem
is never done - each time-coiled,

spiralled, scripted cell reads endlessly
the masterwork – responds, reacts -

adapts, expresses, alters or deletes –
restlessly embroidering; elaborating

the art of life in chemistry -
in fresh materials re-drawn

from those first magic molecules
blown from the mouths of stars.


Until Omega, the last letter
in the Genome’s full stop -

crumbling silence of organic death,
twilight shudder of script transition;

understanding the mystery now,
the poem’s unwritten first word,

silent, immaterial syllable
in birthing darkness: Alpha.