Listen, the world is reading

“Despite the power of molecular genetics to reveal the hereditary essence of organisms, the large-scale aspects of evolution remain unexplained, including the origin of species… However, what is being recognised within these ‘sciences of complexity’, as studies of these highly diverse systems are called, is that there are characteristic types of order that emerge from the interactions of many different components… Order emerges out of chaos.’ Brian Goodwin, How the Leopard Changed its Spots, 1994

‘Life is just bytes and bytes of information.’ Richard Dawkins, River out of Eden, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1995

‘REPLICATION AND TRANSCRIPTION: SHAPING THE LANDSCAPE OF THE GENOME – As the relationship between nuclear structure and function begins to unfold, a picture is emerging of a dynamic landscape that is centred on the two main processes that execute the regulated use and propagation of the genome. Rather than being subservient enzymatic activities, the replication and transcriptional machineries provide potent forces that organize the genome in three-dimensional nuclear space. Their activities provide opportunities for epigenetic changes that are required for differentiation and development. In addition, they impose physical constraints on the genome that might help to shape its evolution… The finding that most of the genome is transcribed indicates that transcription factories are principal focal points for the nuclear organization of the genome.’ Abstract, Nature, 2005

‘Darwin here and elsewhere, used metaphors from language and from history. Indeed, his reading in language theory and in the new ideas of comparative grammarians and etymologists gave him a thought-model at a crucial time in the precipitation of his theories….Darwin implies an imagined synchronicity between writing the record and being part of the experience…’ Gillian Beer, Introduction to the Origin of Species 1859, Oxford University Press, 1988


Listen, the world is reading

Listen, at the tremble of membraned
bone shell, skin drum sounding even

to shivering of dead stars; organic
instrument tuned to the chemical

dancing of all life – earth and green,
fur, scale, eyes, firing - the world is

reading itself; composing the poem
of night. At spiral roots of silence,

the moonstruck stone of midnight,
life’s fingerless Braille finds wings

already written – flower-furled, fist-
clenched, invisible as the imaginary

angels enveloped in night’s bright hollows;
plotting their twinkling chemistry in black

blank verse, among volumes of unwritten sky -
skeletal blue embroidered with sequenced stars;

biology’s lush imaginings, her riches,
fantasy beings encrypted in darkness -

the sealed egg dreaming flight - air,
feathers - wind and Sun mechanics.


Here on the numb concrete path,
ugly slug poetry sludging slow -

bluntly muscle-trudging earth; but
rhyming her sparkling silver train -

her unexpected beauties under the Moon;
O tiny, humble bride, low-born, of night -

who does not ever know such labour,
her connoisseurial horned sampling,

understanding of such matters,
will one day make her Mozart.


Under the feverish insistence of leaves,
genius trees scribbling on the horizon

hear manic buds, gagged by darkness;
hurting nubbed limb bones - arthritic

with unspoken leaves - pressured,
cramped thirsty for unknown sun;

come morning, they will burst out,
shrieking green - spring’s bunting

hung still damp, newborn to licking light -
even as the quiet creamy lambs, so cosily

asleep, grow Argonaut wool in warmer rays -
tune loony tails, milk-addict bleats, to original

season-song; the coiled siren-hand of spring
re-fingering, touching everything possible -

earth smiling, opening all her flower mouths,
wide sunshine vowels - sticky throat and eye

one on fused green consonants - wired straw
conducting the seed’s ancient poem, voicing

fresh prints of her non-existent, coded flower,
coaxed into summer’s warm presses; created

for culturing the sugar-worshipping bee
with seductive perfumes, nectar tears -

haloed drunkenly by his own gold wings,
but already translating the encrypted seed,

her living poem written from that first star –
through the belly of water, unadorned grass,

into honey, more and more bees and flowers;
enough to stock the whole world, given time.


Flying now is the moth who is the eyes
of an owl; painting himself for centuries

in the active galleries of DNA, cultivating
his mysterious choice in yellow eyes shut

among dowdy, blank scales; working
out blind eyes in a life of darkness -

glow-worms impersonate a shrunken galaxy
of dwarf stars; the signalling nebulae of love,

and folded in the mouth of night,
star-prickled maw of pale dawn -

noisy, blustering stanzas of wizardly
starling sheen - poised unconscious

before interpretation of the rainbow’s
dark word; their fractious peppering

as morning clears its slow white throat
of salmon cloud - dazzles stars asleep.

The robin will print his red genetic wound
in the garden, his burning feather metaphor

of bleeding heart - transfigured for millennia
through hooked scarlet molecules, in human

stories of his scripted blood; his look is a bright
black question - his eye, like a mouse, a starred

drop of liquid dark, wet miniature of night sky,
as raindrops seal fallen water, the Sun is a skin

over essential light. In a snowy garden he knows
he is the bird of Christmas - coyly acting a card.

Awakened air will whisper sparkling fly sentences,
irritating glitter-grammar circling, threading silvery

through the warm webs of summer - in rotting nooks,
the terrible bluebottle’s hellish iridescence read aloud

from beauty’s dark books, with the peacock-armoured
metal beetle, brilliant navy rook who gave all his music

for brains; and the stoned bumble-bee purring, slung
so low, but turning sick, sluggish on relentless sugar,

sweetness of flower love, its seductive floral sonnets,
drugged with perfume; always stumbling him home

on his clumsy way with pollen - translating his gold
burden to coagulant food-light, stolen we call honey.

The embroidering spider’s complex web verses,
her sticky silver geometry, will capture passing

winter breath to prick out with crystal consonants,
illuminated diagram, evidence of her home craft -

as song seen, natural score - art and maths
adorning the humblest corners of the world.


The startling white poem of the hunting owl
flashes, flutters my heart - savage apprentice

angel, earth emissary - silent through midnight’s
empty black screen, blurred flamenco wing-fans,

reading feathers to decoding eyes, in error,
as meteor-streaks, continuous hooked light -

breaking materials, organic molecules,
to invisibility, non-illusory elements -

sharing that single held note of mercury water-
skin, seen perfectly by round-eyed, mute Moon;

spooky silver spinster - trowelled with borrowed
light, crazed with jealousy for the green and blue;

soprano stars her choir - screeching high C’s -
calling desperate through the dry seas of space.


I remember the fur of winter hare and snow,
Polar Bear, are but one muffled white sound;

my quiet red heart, dredging,
mistakes itself for sister rose -

ancestor reading love slowly
as muscled petals opening -

we are fingers and leaves,
dark eyes converting light

into blood, flesh, flower;
cycling energy and dust

from invisible impulses
of life - DNA’s passion.


Everything speaks the language of me -
music of my bones that once were stars,

poetry of my wings which have crumbled
into longing arms, sacrificed for fingers -

my eyes that were written from light,
that are the living blue flesh of light.

Everything that is, which lives, is written,
reads and writes, composes, dreams itself -

same dictionary, letters, language, words;
all fresh workings, literary embroideries

on a theme, but rich with identity, distinct;
one distinguishable print in the Universe –

one dreaming house of poetry in all time -
particular circumstance of written Earth.


Listen, under these shell vibrations,
the swimming blue word of Earth -

drummed song, chemical chorus -
one poem in the black auditorium

of space - among star, planetary silence -
rhyming trees and water, bee and flower;

mammal, grass, meat - animal, plant, light -
orchestrating oxygen; spelling green, colour,

from water’s bright heart -
skin, muscle, living glass,

from transparent coagulation,
glueing of poetry’s molecules

with light, struggle and hunger -
her communal root is deafening,

her moving zoo of creatures reading -
fur, scale, wing; finger, flight, vision,

from shifting formulae of species;
by agonising, incremental change -

speaking aloud in life, bio-diversity,
Evolution’s sublime organic poetry.


The Gypsy-green word of your eye
writes in the North-grey sea of mine;

where sequinned stars are pilot-lights,
sparks of that original blaze, burning

among nascent dust - our paper, all holy,
now smouldering; as new life brands, lit,

we express genetic truths, chemical stories,
biological legends - storytellers now bound

in Earth’s unfinished, living book, reciting -
flexing our blunt skin-and-bone fossil-wings,

raising mythical tails, opening palms as leaves;
our blood’s red word is translated water, world

element – encapsulation, warm metamorphosis
of ocean, plumbing our air-sailing boat of flesh;

my heart’s encrypted story, communal epic -
the centuries of love engraving my family’s

chapter, my own sprawling, vivid paragraph
writing over the present, combining tenses -

hooking my finger-bones with pterodactyls,
bats, passionflowers and fluttering shrews -

and among these polished trophies, honed
genetic bundles, my own cherished ghosts

strung - elaborately re-worked - their poems
passing to me, being me; word of them alive.


Listen - at dog-membrane tremble,
mountain garden-stones are crying

in abandoned rain, so unashamedly -
dazzling, wet with clear bright spirit

dripping everywhere, still, on Earth -
as light dancing the molecules of life;

struggling piteously, so admirably
for eyes, to know light, they shine -

so slowly they are growing hearts; hard
black fossil-muscles, dreaming of blood.