Matrix

It was a hard thing to undo this knot./ The rainbow shines, but only in the thought/ Of him who looks. Yet not in that alone,/ For who makes rainbows by invention?/ And many standing round a waterfall/ See one bow each, yet not the same for all,/ But each a handsbreath further than the next./ The sun on falling waters writes the text/ Which yet is in the eye or in the thought./ It was a hard thing to undo this knot.’ Gerard Manley Hopkins, Poet

‘Heredity is a modifiable stored programme; metabolism a universal machine. The recipe that links them is a code, an abstract message that can be embodied in a chemical, physical or even immaterial form. Its secret is that it can cause itself to be replicated. Anything that can use the resources of the world to get copies of itself made is alive; the most likely form for such a things to take is a digital message – a number, a script or a word.’ Matt Ridley, Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, Fourth Estate, 2000


Matrix


These moments when I hold my milky child
sleepy on my knee,

this cup of my heart overflows -
love drowns me

with only the soul of water.
All that’s left

in the total silveriness
are co-ordinates -

a net of stars,
for passion;

universal focus,
holy grid reference.

(Passion now wearing her new, calm face -
with dazzling skin of thickened light, but
her uncontrollably-burning, crazy star-eyes
cooled now into owl pools, huge and shining-
holding a whole bright face, so mirror-clear.
This time proved to her absolutely, indubitaly
she can survive, so fully hooked, she has lain
down her weapons, brands - her desperation –
memory of all her untimely deaths, periodic
insanity; madness all lion-tamed behind her,
she has changed from her Gothic red velvet
into stainless white silk robes, a gold crown,
carrying her quieted fire captured like a lamp,
showing her trail of unstable, hollow ghosts -
who had all seemed to be immortal for a time.)

There are no eyes anymore,
filming skin, nerve flash -

senses too thick, clumsy,
too electrical,

like a plug-in Moon;
white nerved hands

just wired starfish prints
on thoughts of skin, hair, air.

Our bodies are folded away
like winter gloves

in this almost deathly summer of things -
breathing goes on for us

like the presence of a ghost,
estranged mechanism.


My child is the shine
in the apple of God’s eye;

I,
only the ramshackle vehicle for love;

but a silver skeleton I didn’t know
existed under my bones,

like the snowflake’s vest of crocheted ice,
is becoming perfect,

matrix -
more inorganic than organic -

like spirit-root
of flowering flesh.


Everything else swims away to be itself -
I feel love write over me

with only the spirit of its word;
at last I have learnt its language,

am almost worthy;
now I understand,

know what it means -
why God had a child.