From the threads of nothing

‘Nature gets away with it:/ Repeats each year the same/ Familiar alphabet// And utters, without shame,/ The clichés she has aired/ Since daffodils first came// Before the swallow dared;/ Her phrases catch the beath;/ We don’t ask to be spared// When, having passed through death,/ We face the platitude/ Of tenth – or fiftieth - // Return to life; have stood/ Repeated ecstasies/ In the enchanted wood…//…Are we not Nature too?’ Edward Lowbury, Redundancy

‘Think of that part of me wishing tonight to remember/ The split-second edge before the beginning,/ To remember by a sudden white involution of sight,/ By a vision of tension folding itself/ Inside clear open waters, by imitating a manipulation/ Of cells in a moment of distinction, wishing to remember/ The entire language made during that crossing.’ Pattian Rogers, The Rites of Passage

‘From words to literature in structural proteomics - Technical advances on several frontiers have expanded the applicability of existing methods in structural biology and helped close the resolution gaps between them. As a result, we are now poised to integrate structural information gathered at multiple levels of the biological hierarchy- from atoms to cells - into a common framework. The goal is a comprehensive description of the multitude of interactions between molecular entities, which in turn is a prerequisite for the discovery of general structural principles that underlie all cellular processes.’ Nature, 2003

From the threads of nothing

What agonising magic among the stars -
making from the dark threads of nothing;

silver fibres drawn from thought
haunting the empty halls of space.

Coaxing ideas into atoms,
energy, particles between,

to clustering molecules,
identity of a single cell;

life’s physical luxury -
organic sumptuousness.

Writing the means of Earth,
only from your own Word,

giving yourself,
your nature -

whispering existence through water,
the uncertain sleep of cultured light;

calling coded seeds to nurtured earth,
telling the worms of violins, Mozart -

proclaiming to flowers and Sun
how Einstein would look up too -

artist, philosopher, scientist, citizen -
one day understand such mechanisms,

how something comes from nothing -
conduit, cipher, tools and production;

at grand moments of chemistry,
sublime transcription, notation,

mothers and fathers would know
this urge, universal satisfaction -

an echo of original Creation;
and the big meaning, of love.