‘Francis Crick and Sydney Brenner thought that the task of ‘cracking’ the genetic code would take generations but in truth they hit upon the basic principle almost immediately… What if each amino acid was coded by a three-base sequence? Then there are sixty-four possible variants – of four times four times four. They tried this, and found that lo!, what was logically the simplest solution is in fact what nature has chosen to do…’ Ian Wilmut, The Second Creation: The Age of Biological Control, by the scientists who cloned Dolly, Headline, 2001

‘Thus the general plan of living things seemed almost obvious. Each gene determines a particular protein.’ Francis Crick, What Mad Pursuit, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989

‘DNA: A design icon - Twentieth century style gurus Charles and Ray Eames knew a good design when they saw one. Their influential short film Powers of Ten (196 uses a ‘ten times’ scale change every ten seconds. The pivot point is a man lying in a field. A few minutes in one direction and we reach the Milky Way. A few minutes in the other direction and we are staring at the milky strands of the man’s DNA. Fifty years ago scientists revealed the structure of DNA…The double helix structure of DNA became a design icon. Why has the double helix become so popular? Simplicity, symmetry and serendipity are key. The simplicity of the design - a spiral form resembling nothing more complex than a twisted ladder - means the metaphors used to describe DNA are easily understood and even more easily depicted. If you believe humans are hardwired for equating symmetry with beauty, then the pleasing proportions of DNA - parallel sugar spines connected by rungs of base pairs - ensures a positive atavistic response. And just as a slightly wonky nose on the otherwise perfect face of a model can add rather than subtract from her beauty, the slightly off-centre spiraling of DNA adds to its design perfection. As for serendipity, nature handed us a design that is easily read by both layperson and specialist. Designers often call the inexplicable “something” that raises a design from common to classic, the “X factor”. It looks good, it’s well-made and it works. And DNA’s got these in spades.’ Denna Jones, Curator, TwoTen Gallery and Contemporary Initiatives, Wellcome Trust, 2003

‘Have not all souls thought/ For many ages, that our bodies wrought/ Of air, and fire, and other elements?/ And now they think of new ingredients…’ John Donne, 1571/2-1631, An Anatomy of the World, The Second Anniversarie

‘One reason that many of us take DNA personally - more so than say, discoveries of superconductors, cold fusion or dark matter - is because it constitutes the enigmatic core around which much of our behaviour, desires, fears, as well as our health, revolve.’ BBC News, 2003

‘The whole process seemed so utterly mysterious that one hardly knew how to begin thinking about it.’ Francis Crick, Co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, What Mad Pursuit, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989
‘The double helix is one of the most readily recognized images circulating. DNA is often represented as a smooth, right-handed double spiral of varying relative dimensions, often without base pairs or obvious antiparallel strands. The fact that recognition survives the loss of these essential features suggests that the helix motif has a symbolic life of its own as the embodiment of the genome, genetics and life itself. Where are the limits of misrepresentation? To represent a left-handed helix is just wrong, according to the howls of literal-minded critics who write whenever an artist includes the mirror image of a double helix. In doing so, we have infringed upon their brand. If the double helix is to stand for our kind of life that arose from one set of chiral molecules, it has to be right-handed, they say.’ Editorial, Nature, 2005

‘… in the last 50 years DNA has ended up in some pretty ropey design manifestations… most DNA designs are such literal depictions of the double helix that they reduce the sublime to the cliché. Aside from numerous DNA sculptures…how about a double helix tie or boxer shorts? Or a left-spiraling DNA bracelet? The hyperbole accompanying some of the more banal creations is often better than the object itself. A necktie with a giant silk-screened DNA molecule has the accompanying text: “Helix, schmelix, what I’d like to do is meet whatever has DNA this big. And it’s replicating. Yikes!” A quick search on the internet reveals many design businesses that incorporate the word DNA in their company title. And those that use the double helix as part of the company logo quite frequently get their DNA in an awkward - and incorrect - twist. Like a corkscrew, DNA twists to the right. But sinister twisting DNA appears in the most predictable (i.e. non-scientific) places as well as the most unlikely (an edition of James Watson’s book The Double Helix).’ Denna Jones, Curator, TwoTen Gallery and Contemporary Initiatives, Wellcome Trust, 2003

‘Francis Crick lived in this house in Cambridge, now marked by a golden helix.’ BBC Science online

‘Their position, when spread out, look somewhat random but it clearly is not: the position of each piece of DNA – each gene – in three-dimensional space clearly influences its expression.’ The Facts of Life revisited, Ian Wilmut and Keith Campbell, The Second Creation, Headline, 2001

‘Towards multidimensional genome annotation - Our information about the gene content of organisms continues to grow as more genomes are sequenced and gene products are characterized. Sequence-based annotation efforts have led to a list of cellular components, which can be thought of as a one-dimensional annotation. With growing information about component interactions, facilitated by the advancement of various high-throughput technologies, systemic, or two-dimensional, annotations can be generated. Knowledge about the physical arrangement of chromosomes will lead to a three-dimensional spatial annotation of the genome and a fourth dimension of annotation will arise from the study of changes in genome sequences that occur during adaptive evolution. Here we discuss all four levels of genome annotation, with specific emphasis on two-dimensional annotation methods.’ Abstract, Nature Reviews, Genetics 7, 2006

MY DREAM OF THE DOUBLE HELIX

The Moon was a single silver word
written in the black mouth of night,

sky’s opening blue vowel -
pared beyond musical light

to her chalky white bone,
pocked, unbeating heart;

cold molecules and tarnished gas -
to her brilliant round skull, stone

skeleton that is the stark idea of her;
the shining milky-blue sky-cocoon

that is the socketed thought of her –
her poem is written as a single word.

But trees flutter embroidery of leaves -
sewn by a single thirsting skinny thread;

green eyes flagged, scribbling on open blue,
until yellow and orange, red syllables ignite -

in ragged poems aflame, whispering of death
and life subsumed by one season; snowflaking

down from kneeling evangelist branches -
showering earth with burning scarlet stars;

trunks bend, articulating the human torso,
limbs still morphed to earth in illustration,

their golden rings sounding another year,
resin crying arboreal tear interpretations.

Flowers took me in their thin green arms,
open almond palms - cheek to invisibly

veined petal cheek - reading sugared breath,
love poetry for bees; sweet floral dictionary

for translating summer light into shining nectar -
gold sundust of pollen; ultimately spelling honey.

I touched their plugged green necks -
and through my open pink star palms,

the low sound of humming earth wired,
that is like a beatless, deep, slow heart.

And my own heart was like a morning rose,
opening from my chest on muscular hinges,

responsive to light, shifting moods, sundial
creeps of brilliance and shadow - raised up,

the leaves of my hands showed the skeleton
of a star - a Milky Way at every finger tip –

and now I saw, also sketches of paw and claw,
incipient fur under shorn skin, bonded hoof -

recognising the vertebrate and non-vertebrate
white bone and black exoskeleton, water-bone

of mother-of-pearl shell; my spine itching
with a tail, my shoulder blade nubs aching -

I was a bundle of prints - animal and plant
ghosts; loose, shifting, but all rooted to me,

trailing shapes like a Gothic bride; a veil
of bird and mammal chimeras, dim hopes

of a sea urchin for eyes - one day seeing in me;
my human shape was just a mannequin of stars.

And this rose of my heart became a red light -
clarifying like plasma from blood, scarlet cells;

for the sight of my black eyes reading the world -
seeking to the heart of words, beyond letter, active

symbol, to sound, space where notes silently carry
music; pulling back again to the moving life prints,

temporal place of poem skeletons, language of flesh -
before being blinds her scaffold, hangs it with animals

and flowers, four billion years of experimentation,
art of diversity. And the writing, continuous script,

was dancing - hearing that music in the darkness,
translated into spirals, fairground shapes; notation

culled from the birth of a universe, chemistry of life -
the whole world written in twisting silver spirals, still

writing – in attraction - loving, parting, replicating -
poems that are never still, connected to one another;

verses in one work, over and over, entitled Evolution;
for robin and man, leaf or worm, however elaborate,

whatever organic style, peacock or sparrow equal -
they spoke only a single communal word: Creation.

“We’ve discovered the secret of life.” Francis Crick, Co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, in local pub, UK, 1953

‘Moreover, the insight that the discovery [of the structure of DNA] provided into how human characteristics arise from our individual genes created a veritable super-highway of research, ushering in gene therapy for inherited diseases and culminating in the recent sequencing of the human genome.’ Adrian Hayday, Professor of Immunobiology, King’s College London, UK, 2003

‘DNA is, in every sense, a modern icon. For decades, it has enthralled scientists striving to understand its molecular meaning, provided an aesthetic template for artists, and challenged society with all sorts of ethical conundrums. The defining moment for DNA was the discovery of its structure. Published in the science journal Nature 50 years ago this month, James Watson and Francis Crick described how two strands of DNA embrace to form a double helix, and sparked a scientific revolution. To convince the skeptics that DNA truly was the material of inheritance - the so-called “stuff of life” - it was necessary to show how it could be copied and passed on from one generation to the next. Watson and Crick’s model immediately hinted as to how DNA might be copied - each strand of the helix could act as a template to replicate the other.’ Carina Dennis, Nature, from BBC Science, 2003

‘All warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament, which THE GREAT FIRST CAUSE endued with animality, with the power of acquiring new parts, attended with new propensities…and thus possessing the faculty of continuing to improve by its own inherent activity, and of delivering those improvement by generation to its posterity, world without end!’ Erasmus Darwin, Zoonomia; or, the Laws of Organic Life, 1, 1794-6

‘DNA – the most interesting molecule in all nature.’ James Watson, Co-discoverer of the structure of DNA

The only media report of the discovery of DNA, the secret of life – in 1953, the same year as Everest was climbed, and Queen Elizabeth 2nd was crowned - was in one newspaper, the News Chronicle.

WEE DNA STORY - ‘A remarkably short scientific paper, known officially as a letter, was published on 25 April 1953 in Nature, by James Watson and Francis Crick. It was perhaps the most momentous paper of the modern era, proposing a structure for the chemical, DNA (Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid), which composes the hereditary material of all living cellular organisms. The proposed structure - a double helix - rapidly became an icon, aesthetically beautiful, and stunning in its capacity to explain how DNA is replicated in order to transmit the genetic material to the next generation…Watson and Crick’s paper was published without their undertaking a single experiment. Instead, the experiments underpinning their albeit inspired models were undertaken over the previous three years in the Strand basement laboratories of the Medical Research Council Biophysics Unit at King’s. The prime movers in obtaining the data at King’s were Professor Maurice Wilkins, who had commenced pilot studies on the use of X-rays to analyse DNA structure, and Dr Rosalind Franklin, a Fellow who arrived at King’s in January 1951, and who advanced the X-ray resolution of DNA structure to a new level of clarity and sophistication. Their data were published alongside the Watson and Crick paper but because neither provided a compelling model for DNA structure, they have often been overlooked. In 1962 Wilkins shared the Nobel Prize with Watson and Crick but Franklin had tragically died a few years earlier at the age of 37.’ Adrian Hayday, Professor of Immunobiology, King’s College London, UK, 2003

‘All living things reproduce; reproduction, or ‘replication’, is one of the distinguishing features of life. The easiest way to reproduce is simply to divide. This is the way DNA replicates itself…The conceptual problems is – or was – that any one body produces many thousands of different proteins, which do hundreds of thousands of different things, but DNA itself seems chemically simple. In fact a DNA molecule has only three basic componenets: a sugar called deoxyribose; a number of phosphorus-containing groups called ‘phosphate radicals’; and a set of four ‘bases’ or ‘nucleotides’ known as adenine (A), cytosine (C), thymine (T), and guanine (G). These four bases provide the only source of variation in the DNA molecule. No wonder biologists thought it was boring, and could not possibly be the stuff of genes. How could such simplicity generate such complexity, and with such precision? But, as always, nature is way ahead of us… the order in which the four bases occure in the DNA molecule provides a ‘code’ that is in principle rich enough to specify all the proteins that any living thing could ever require: an infinity of possibilities.’ Ian Wilmut, The Second Creation, Headline, 2001

‘This is now the bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh..’ Genesis, 2, The Bible

‘For many years, people who studied genetics thought that DNA wasn’t complex enough to contain all of the information needed to make up a genome. DNA acts as the code, but how does it do it?…The function of DNA depends to a large extent on its structure. The discovery of the structure of DNA by James Watson and Francis Crick is one of the most famous scientific discoveries of all time. The two scientists used evidence collected by other scientists, particularly that of Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins, to deduce the shape of DNA. One of the most important pieces of evidence came from Franklin’s experiments of shining X-rays though the DNA molecule and using photographic film to record where the scattered X-rays fall. The shadows on the film can be used to work out where the dense molecules lie. This technique is known as X-ray crystallography….Working out the arrangement of bases in the DNA helix was made easier by ‘Chargaff’s rules’…Erwin Chargaff was a Czech-American scientist who had noticed that within every DNA molecule, the number of A bases was always the same as the number of T bases, and that the number of C bases was always the same as the number of G bases.’ YourGenome.org

‘These are the generations of the heaven and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew…’ Genesis 2, The Bible

‘..a vital propery of a gene was that it could be copied exactly for generation after generation, with only occasional mistakes. What we were trying to guess was the general nature of this copying mechanism… of course now that we know the answer, it all seems so completely obvious that no-one nowadays remembers just how puzzling the problem seemed then.’ Francis Crick, Co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, What Mad Pursuit, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989

DNA

‘In principle the duplication of DNA is straighforward, yet in execution it is miraculous, although it happens millions of times each second, in each of us.’ Ian Wilmut, scientist

DNA – or, deoxyribonucleic acid -
a mouthful which should be a poem;

adenine, cytosine, guanine, thymine,
which should be the names of angels -

creative bond of adenine with thymine,
cystosine with guanine; A toT, C to G,

which is love,
as chemistry.

Who is this poet who can write the flower,
burning-ember leopard, in just four letters

clustered into threes; spell lily skin
and spotted fur, peacock tail, scale.

1.8 metres of DNA in each of our cells,
sparkling spiral strings, silver threads -

wound into structures less than a tenth
of a millimetre across, leaving plenty

of room on the head of a pin for angels,
invisibly clustering the space of a seed;

reaching to the Sun and back 600 times,
bundled into 23 chromosomes, paired –

three billion letters planted with genes,
nuggets of DNA, in encrypted verses –

chemical factories with magic and dancing
at the heart - realised script called to life -

creating proteins - amino acids -
which are the shared spoken word

of skin and wing - peacock and goat;
expression, mechanism of holy code

which has written itself out of nothing,
the original miracle found among stars.

Writing deducted, life deduced,
from the blindness of existence;

evidence and imagination beyond bone,
molecules of bone, to the dream of bone -

Maurice Wilkins, Rosalind Franklin’s
X-ray crystallography, which sounds

like it looks for the heart of rubies -
bone of closed stone, bright skeleton

of a diamond (which might resemble
that of a star, starfish or dandelion) -

shining X-rays through the DNA molecule,
catching the scattered pattern, recording as

a ghosthunter’s camera, authored shadows
on the film, showing the dense molecules -

James Watson and Francis Crick dreaming
the Double Helix, orderly flux; the dancing

spiral, alive with love and creativity -
artist’s shape that is neither life nor

chemistry - idea or dream - but all,
synthesised for imagining, pictured

for understanding, practicality -
as e=mc2 is expression, stripped

poem of energy and mass; so a ladder,
elegant and twisting - with something

of a swan’s neck; backboned poles
of alternating sugar and phosphate

groups – attached bases forming rungs
at each waisted twist, loyal partnering

of bases informed by ‘Chargaff’s rules’ -
Erwin Chargaff, the Czech-American

who noticed that within every DNA molecule,
the number of A bases was always the same

as the number of T; the number of C bases
was always the same as the number of G -

so Watson and Crick suggested each ‘rung’
was composed of a pair of bases, joined by

hydrogen bonds, shackles - A always forming
bonds with T; C always forming bonds with G.

“We’ve discovered the secret of life,” shouted Francis
in the local pub - 1953, when the Moon was still aloof,

blue writing of Earth on the black space page unread -
and the Human Genome lay sparkling like the golden

Pharaoh undisturbed. Pattern and concept, sequence,
mechanism – art and beauty of the Double Helix not

a luxury, lucky add-on, but integral, essential, one,
as everything created by its spiral is a work of art –

creation; kinship residing at the heart of the idea,
making, creating - a holy mechanism, copying –

growing, multiplying; and will become the tiger,
leaf or twitching rabbit in the garden; eagle, fly,

or nomad snail – given four billion years, my child;
gene sequence, spun space, the place of the Word -

deoxyribonucleic acid, etching the words of a poem
with informative light and the blank spaces between -

writing on Earth’s wet page, the work of the blue planet;
sketches and drawings of creation, knitted on spiral pins.

‘Yet what wert thou to him, who knew his works,/ Before creation form’d them…’ Christopher Smart, 1722-71, On the Omniscience of the Supreme Being

Did God Know

Did God know the pattern of the zebra
would come from water, plastic mud -

did He dream the peacock feather,
starling throat, burning tiger skin -

white bear matching melting fur
with snow at the end of the world.

Did He think the lily skin,
or thistles’ Einstein hair -

new leaves blinking, shining,
palms still damp with spirit.

Did He invent poetry’s silver bones,
music’s flexible mercury skeleton -

silently breeding words, sounds, notes -
each one the product of a million years.

Was He amazed by us,
bred from His germ -

as our child’s face startles,
haunted by our very eyes -

tugging of umbilical wire -
groping passionflower arms.

Did He know these voices
would come in black night,

calling His name; pleading, trying
to surrender freedom for justice -

peace, healing, beauty, love,
company among dead stars -

not sure anymore if He had invented
them, or they Him in the big scheme.

Had He planted the seed of love -
His own heart, original life kernel

beating under earth, spawning all -
waiting anxious as a good gardener;

dreaming the flower,
inventing loneliness.

‘… so water and flame, the diamond, the charcoal, and the mantling champagne, with its ebullient sparkles, are convoked and fraternized by the theory of the chemist. This is, in truth, the first charm of chemistry, and the secret of the almost universal interest excited by its discoveries. The serious complacency which is afforded by the sense of truth, utility, permanence, and progression, blends with and ennobles the exhilarating surprise and the pleasurable sting of curiosity, which accompany the propounding and the solving of an Enigma. It is the sense of a principle of connection given by the mind, and sanctioned by the correspondency of nature. Hence the strong hold which in all ages chemistry has had on the imagination.’ Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Landing-Place, or Essays Interposed for Amusement, Retrospect, and Preparation

‘and ev’n therein are out soft bodies vext and harm’d/ by their own small distemperature, nor could they endure/ wer’t not that by a secret miracle of chemistry/ they hold internal poise upon a razor-edge/ that may not ev’n be blunted, lest we sicken and die.’ Robert Bridges, 1844-1930, The Testament of Beauty

‘Million-fueled,/ nature’s bonfire burns on.’ That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the Comfort of the Resurrection, Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1844-89

‘I come from empyrean fires - / From microscopic spaces,/ Where molecules with fierce desires,/ Shiver in hot embraces./ The atoms dash, the spectra flash,/ Projected on the screen,/ The double D, magnesianb,/ And Thallium’s living green.’ James Clerk Maxwell, 1831-79 To the Chief Musician upon Nabla

‘The shape of the DNA double helix is ideal for DNA’s role as a store and preserver of information.’ Medical Research Council, UK

Does God Remember?

Does God remember the defining;
shining organic coalescence, time

when the first cell settled -
the wondrous chemistry.

Being drawing itself into being
by its very nature, will to exist;

using anything around,
just to be, stay, still be -

the creativity with those chemicals!
Even God thought it was a miracle

when He had made it possible,
dreamed them into existence -

imagined the matrix, Word,
to call from Periodic Table,

list ingredients, principle, into life -
held his breath that it would work,

this calling to matter of pattern,
this holy glueing; good practise

for his trick of body and soul,
joining of irreconcilable stuff

only a god could possibly pull off -
like a magician with a miracle, or

two up his sleeve; bouquets
of flowers, coloured strings -

making the world rehearse
billennia until it got it right,

learned his own best tricks;
made his own organic son

to make sure he wasn’t wrong -
life was that good, that fantastic;

such a show of preposterous miracles
no-one could treat it as other than holy,

doubt the dominance, principle of love –
realised he must breathe to make it work,

stir such chemicals with light and love -
lifting out of artless mixture, possibility;

gently, slowly - not that great showy gasp
among the heavens, sneezing stars, planets

all over the place, burning his silver fingers
on the molten Sun brought hot – ferocious -

from his oven belly - rolling planet after planet
in his palm, learning, until Earth was perfected;

the world his bulging family album,
holy record - birth, marriage, death,

birth…fabulous circular ripples of life
bringing tiger, spider, flower and man;

beetle and hand, eye and grasshopper
from the same root, ingredients - art.

Were there tears He learned
when the first rain happened -

sky sobbing at the huge beauty
of her blue reflection in the sea;

Earth began to learn -
reflect fresh love back,

run with His spirit of creativity;
at the first exquisite heart flutter,

possibilities of that startling blood -
when He saw the eye coming to be

to dazzling excitement of waiting light -
first mother-creature understanding love.

‘But his daily amusement is Chemistry. He has a small furnace, which he employs in distillation and which has long been the solace of his life. He draws oils and waters, and essences and spirits, which he knows to be of no use; sits and counts the drops as they come from his retorot, and forgets that, whilst a drop is falling, a moment flies away.” Idler, Samuel Johnson, 1758

“I shall attack Chemistry, like a Shark”. Samuel Taylor Coleridge

‘In January 2001, scientists… produced complex organic molecules under conditions resembling those which exist in interstellar clouds of gas and dust…which, when immersed in water spontaneously created membraneous structures resembling soap bubbles. All life on earth is based on cells, bags of biological material encased in just this kind of membrane. The implication of this work is that space is filled with chemical compounds which can easily give a kick-start to life if they land in a suitable environment, such as on the surface of the Earth.’ John Gribbin, Stardust: the cosmic recycling of stars, planets and people, Penguin, 2001

Who Breathed Chemicals into Life

Who breathed chemicals into life,
made that art of heart and rose -

process greening leaf,
sugaring siren flower.

Who put owl eyes on butterflies,
what for, or how, came eagles -

flying golden from crumbled dust,
hung burning, crucified with light,

dazzling in dusk’s first purple breath -
why came the twitching red-eyed hare,

his russet fur on fire - rocking madly
into nervous twilight, scattering slow

fat rabbits munching grass at sunset,
rusting in the final scene of evening.

Who caused honeysuckle to exhale,
romancing early moths stumbling

into light and perfume, summer evening’s
warm blue mouth - blur-blue - dim-blue -

gold-blue, rose-blue, navy, black; stoning
the still-blue hours - holding its sugared,

signalled breath, until now - time of bat-
flicker, hoots; of stuttering mice moving

grass blades aside with human fingers -
how can all this be, here, accomplished,

asks the man wearing his chemical suit
of miracles, fabulous embroidery of life;

his own experimental design, gorgeous
body and hair, inhabiting these fingers,

this brain; able to pick, read grain
of wheat or sand - feed, calculate -

admire, plant, dream, philosophise.
Why does the kissing of X and Y -

egg and sperm, do anything at all?
What catalyst comes among us -

to that interior dark, savage sex
of lichen, spore, amoebae, dirt -

bumping into moths, moons, bats,
and honeysuckle; night’s speckled

banners hung shining with ignorant planets,
gossiping clusters milky with fogged light -

humming, searching with storm-lamp mind,
these blind fingertips telling dandelion clock

from child’s hair; but just, for a spark
one is able to imagine looks something

like a bright star -
the touch of light.

‘First HEAT3 from chemic dissolution springs,/ and gives to matter its eccentric wings…. ATTRACTION4 next…The ponderous atoms from the light divides,/ Approaching parts with quick embrace combines,/ Swells into spheres, and lengthens into lones./ Last, as fine goads the gluten-threads excite,/ Cords grapple cords, and webs with webs unite;/ And quick CONTRACTION5 with ethereal flame/ Lights into life the fibre-woven frame.-/ Hence without parent by spontaneous birth/ Rise the first specks of animated earth;/ From Nature’s womb the plant or insect swims,/ And buds or breaths, with microscopic limbs…3. The matter of heat is an ethereal fluid, in which all things are immersed… Without heat, all the matter of the world would be condensed into a point by the power of attraction; and neither fluidity nor life could exist….4…. Particular attraction, or chemical affinity, must likewise occupy the spaces between the particles of matter which they cause to approach each other….[Darwin’s notes]’ Erasmus Darwin, 1731-1802, The Temple of Nature

‘*The word ‘mechanics’, in this context, is provocative. It stands in opposition to the concept of ‘vitalism’. Vitalists maintain that life is driven by unique processes that are not explicable purely by the standard laws of physics and chemistry, while ‘mechanists’ maintain that life simply required complicated chemistry.’ Note, Ian Wilmut and Keith Campbell, The Second Creation, Headline, 2001

‘Chemist, you breed/ In orient climes each sorcerous weed/ That energises dream – ‘. Herman Melville, 1819-91, The New Zealot to the Sun

‘SURLY: “What else are all your terms,/ Whereon no one of your writers ‘grees with other?/ Of your elixir, your lac virginis,/ Your stone, your med’cine, and your chrysosperme,/ Your sal, your sulphur, and your mercury,/ Your oil of height, your tree of life, your blood,/ Your marchesite, your tutie, your magnesia,/Your toad, your crow, your dragon, and your panther;/ Your sun, your moon, your firmament, your adrop,/ Your lato, azoch, zernich, chibrit, heautarit,/ And then your red man, and your white woman,/ With all your broths, your menstrues, and materials,/ Of piss and egg-shells, women’s terms, man’s blood,/ Hair o’ the head, burnt clouts, chalk, merds, and clay,/ Powder of bones, scalings of iron, glass,/ And worlds of other strange ingredients,/ Would burst a man to name?” SUBTLE: “And all these named,/ Intending but one thing: which art our writers/ Used to obscure their art”.’ Ben Jonson, 1572-1637, The Alchemist

Feeling the Discovered Workings of the Genome

I rub my hands together, feeling frizzy chemical combustion;
skin spawning elastic cell-seal - muffled hinges of articulate
stem-star bone crackling silently under our muscular gloves,

that can stroke notes from gappy piano teeth, but strangle;
comfort, strengthen, punch or pray - the organic red pump,
battery clock and wires, pulsing wrist guages industriously.

I run my fingers through my hair, frazzling the yellow factory,
sparking seed-silk filaments into animal fuzz - ghost remnant
sprouting arty follicles with no imperative for such a display -

kept like a peackock tail, physical halo, scripture of decoration.
My stomach oven growls - independent hunger, acidic machine
processes. Dust launches from me in dirty sun; my own glittering

galaxy of spent particles - each authored with potential me -
my universal signature floating nowhere, nano person-planets
seeded with the means of life, wandering or returning to earth.

I feel the Genome; writing, powering. My own chemicals
dancing - combining, producing, housekeeping, adapting;
such quadrilles, Eightsome Reels, a-waltzing in the heart

and brain. Pagan and religious ecstasy as one, as life.
So much vibration, I burn blue/red/gold as Autumn -
as sparking leaf, touch my small child’s spring hand;

feel silver spiral-fires of reciprocal DNA, sparkling,
chemical crackling of growing hand - practicalities
of bone, blood, skin; presence of art, beauty settling

this pristine home, universal energy flowing around
his head - the mark of a child, child halo; new light
called from old, original - yet still illuminating stars.

‘All life is chemistry’, Jan Baptista van Helmont, 1648

‘Life roughly consists of the chemistry of three atoms, hydrogen, carbon and oxygen, which among them make up 98% of all atoms in living beings…life consists of the interplay of two kinds of chemicals – proteins and DNA. Protein represents chemistry, living breathing metabolism and behaviour - what biologists call the phenotype – DNA represents information, replication, breeding, sex – what biologists call the genotype – neither can exist without the other.’ Matt Ridley, Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, Fourth Estate, 2000

‘We are made of stardust.’ John Gribbin, Stardust: the cosmic recycling of stars, planets and people, Penguin, 2001

‘At least some life is chemistry,’ Freidrich Wohler, 1828, (following his synthesistation of urea from ammonium chloride and silver cyanide, crossing what had been the sacrosanct divide between the chemical and biological worlds).

‘In short, with the birth of molecular biology, genetics could become an exercise in chemistry: highly refined chemistry, but chemistry nonetheless.’ Ian Wilmut, The Second Creation, Headline, 2001

“Of course, we have a long way to go before the benefits of this work are realised. The unravelled genome is, on its own, simply a list of chemicals. The next stage is to try to understand how those chemicals work together to create the genetic instructions that operate our bodies.” Sir Robert May, Chief Scientific Advisor to UK Government

‘In a sense, human flesh is made of stardust…Every atom in the human body, excluding only the primordial hydrogen atoms, was fashioned in stars that formed, grew old and exploded most violently before the Sun and the Earth came into being. The explosions scattered the heavy elements as a fine dust through space. By the time it made the Sun, the primordial gas of the Milky Way was sufficiently enriched with heavier elements for rocky planets like the Earth to form. And from the rocks atoms escaped for eventual incorporation in living things: carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulphur for all living tissue; calcium for bones and teeth; sodium and potassium for the workings of nerves and brains; the iron colouring blood red… and so on. No other conclusion of modern research testifies more clearly to mankind’s intimate connections with the universe at large and with the cosmic forces at work among the stars.’ Nigel Calder, The Key to the Universe, BBC, 1977

‘These stars are the fleshed forebears/ Of these dark hills, bowed like labourers// and of my blood…the tree is caught up in the constellations./ My skull burrows among antennae and fronds.’ Ted Hughes, Lupercal, Faber and Faber, 1960

‘Life begins with the process of star formation. We are made of stardust. Every atom of every element in your body except for hydrogen has been manufactured inside stars, scattered across the Universe in great stellar explosions, and recycled to become part of you. The hydrogen is primordial material, produced in the Big Bang, along with Helium… we are a natural product of the Universe we live in.’ John Gribbin, Stardust: the cosmic recycling of stars, planets and people, Penguin, 2001

‘PROTEIN - The DNA codes for protein. In our cells, proteins are the labourforce. It is proteins that get everything done. Proteins make new cells and destroy old or diseased ones. Proteins break down our food to release energy. Proteins organise the transport of useful chemicals between cells. Often, these useful chemicals are themselves proteins. As well as doing things, proteins are the building blocks for most of your body…The ingredients of a protein are amino acids. To build a protein we need to build a long chain of amino acids. There are 20 different types of amino acids, so there are lots of different protein chains we can build. Biologists give amino acids a code letter, as for DNA’ YourGenome.org
‘Thus, the order of play of four bases in a long molecule does indeed provide an organism with all the information it needs to do all the things an organism does. Astonishing!’ Ian Wilmut, The Second Creation, Headline, 2001

God is a Chemist

God is a chemist.
Chemistry is art,

magic.
Beauty is chemistry.

Earth, life -
poetry

written, spoken
with chemicals.

‘Take Carbon for example then/ What shapely towers it constructs to house the hopes of men!/ What symbols it creates/ For power and beauty in the world/ Of patterned ring and hexagon - / Building ten thousand things/ Of earth and air and water!… Love holds its palms before the flower/ Of anthracite and purrs.’ AM Aullivan, Atomic Architecture

‘THE INGREDIENTS FOR LIFE: 1) Liquid water, 2) Chemical building blocks like carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen, 3) An energy source.’ BBC Science, 2006

God the Chemist (1)

God the Chemist,
God the Chemist -

praise his bright materials
prised from unlikely night;

bodies of stars,
blood of light.

Make exultant hymns, symphonies,
to the invented art of First Elements,

cosmic experimentation –
spirit, love and chemicals.

Hail, Holy Alchemist, High Poet,
Philosopher’s Stone of Creativity,

turning nothing
into Earth, Life;

a handful of darkness into green
leaf; transfiguring light into eyes.

‘If only we could read the language, the DNA of tuna and starfish would have ‘sea’ written into the text. The DNA of moles and earthworms would spell ‘underground’…we are digital archives of the African Pliocene, even of Devonian seas; walking repositiories of wisdom out of the old days. You could spend a lifetime reading in this ancient library and die unsated by the wonder of it.’ Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow, Penguin, 1998

‘I open the leaves of the water at a passage/ Of psalms and shadows among the pincered sandcrabs prancing/ And read, in a shell,/ Death clear as a buoy’s bell:/ All praise of the hawk on fire in hawk-eyed dusk be sung.’ Dylan Thomas, Over Sir John’s Hill

‘…we find poetry, as it were, substantiated and realized in nature: yea, nature itself disclosed to us… as at once the poet and the poem!’ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

‘The three letter words of the genetic code are the same in every creature – CGA mean arginine and GCG means alanine in bats, beetles, beech trees, bacteria…whatever animal, plant, bug, you look at, if it is alive it will use the same dictionary and know the same code. All life is one…The unity of life is an empirical fact.’ Matt Ridley, Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters

‘A Poem is the very image of life expressed in its eternal truth. §60 There is this difference between a story and a poem, that a story is a catalogue of detached facts, which have no other bond of connexion than time, place, circumstance, cause and effect; the other is the creation of actions according to the unchangeable forms of human nature, as existing in the mind of the creator, which is itself the image of all other minds.’ Defence of Poetry: Part First, Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1821

Everything is a poem (1)

In the work of the world, everything is a poem;
slow petal hinges closing the drowsy flower -

expressed on evening’s darkening page -
white smudge, humble blurred blue halo,

surviving past her last consciousness of light,
that woke the flower first, always, from earth;

her simple sugar succumbed to chocolately fug,
chloroform sweetness of the honeysuckle drug -

poppy-eyed in struggling dusk, eyelids drooping,
gathering her own small cup of warm darkness.

An owl flash - small Pagan angel annunciating night,
his gorgeous white savagery of spread wings preying;

incandescent red star of dying leaf, lain smouldering
all day in autumn’s gold grate, among burning frost -

luminous also, one feather, but moon-dipped once,
still dripping silver liquid - losing skeletal theories

of sky, motion, dexterity; essential bird-part lost,
discarded involuntarily by a shooting orange fox,

in a field haunted by embroidered butterflies -
too blue to accept extinction, iridescence’s end,

after such time spinning sky fibre into wings -
aesthetic and physical understanding of gravity.

Still a poem, this ghost-blue feather - bedraggled,
without blood or whatever fuels white birds in air;

root-clue to wing, sky-clue of flight, symbolic emblem
of the bird, softened from bone, fashioned from skin -

still wound in unzipped hooks, coiled symphonics -
just audible from the crumbling chemicals, ectastic

even in ruin; such stores of ecstasy in a single feather
cell - songs never sung again - lonely part of a flying

whole - no longer with necessary mechanisms,
connections; but remembering to the last atom -

telling the brown ground-mouth how it is up there,
still singing of it as the last shining molecule falls

apart, back to stardust - becoming one noise -
principle of flight re-furled, laid down, stored

by a generous Universe dreaming molecular
schemes; the symbiotic pattern of the feather.

The foolish moth crashes unconscious, light-
casualty - bumping snow-flakely into desire,

stunned - his wings are sails paddling earth -
legs, stick-wings; he feels like us, struggling

arms outstretched, being planes, birds,
exalting in wind, sunshine, freedom -

how we spread our wings when joy presses
that scripted bone button, still written there,

instructions between the shoulder-blades -
fossil-wings, de-feathered stumps, reflexive

sprouting, though there is nothing to see;
except maybe on summer backs of naked

children playing. The moth is up, stumbling,
soon gulped by darkness; his doomed flight/

near death/survival is a poem - incorporating
tiger-name, Bonsai red Viking horns, burned-

paper wings; more stanzas in his small moth poem,
that will be written all night across wild black sky -

and coiled in him, expressed from cocoon to wing-
dust fallen - scrabbled here, his bright brown mark

on earth. I could make a moth if I were God -
by blowing on this invisible scrambled script,

make it speak again, more moth poems, on and on;
but rubbed in my thumb and forefinger, just stays

moth-dust, inert brown shimmer; nothing - no moths
spring from my fingers’ frictional electricity, except

the idea of moths - but that’s the start – even
this mothy dust-smear glimmering with intent.

Is there anything alive that does not shine, or
was part of being alive, has gleaming residue;

until Death switches back the master-light -
to the mysterious off position; life’s darkness

of possible endings, new breeds, light species.
That little flower keeps luminescing in gloom,

though it has never known a kiss -
who knows if bees came, rubbed

her throat, gathered her pollen, sugars;
if she is mother-flower, floral spinster -

now, I kiss her - kin, sister,
to become part of her poem

this evening - mark, celebrate such union -
which the Genome now shows was written

always in the world, but never read by us.
Our kiss, she enjoys, faint muffled sighing

like the voice of snowflakes; her bluish-white
shine glimmering now above moth-shimmer -

even this conjunction, beauty enough for one night.
But for this night lyric, I gather more lines because

everything is a poem - even my own white hand,
also luminous in darkness, reaching to her neck -

swan of my spine, corn-curl hair, crustacean
pucker in limpet lips; the consummate poem

of eyes speckled silver at night by star reflection -
organic mirror of the galaxy, black pupil of space;

Bonsai Milky Way clustered with promising spirals,
quieted a moment to concentrate on smaller poems -

beautifying leaves in the greater global poem;
universal work begun when time hatched too.

Reciprocally, her DNA altering my whole poem –
write in me too, small flower, thin-lipped, kissed;

rhyme our meeting, touch, with dark verses of white -
drawn from our communal absorption of summer light,

perfume of sweet floral pheromone; taste of pollen -
there is nothing I bring that is not love, our language.

Moth and owl of the Night Poem speak it too -
the honeysuckle, butterfly, orange fox, feather;

still - among the murmur of crumbling spirals,
the red leaf burning a star-hole in the Universe.

Everything is a poem - poem among poems,
greater, grander works, interlinked, growing;

globes of poetry, sphere around sphere
of interwoven layers - interconnected

phrases, words - on and on, in and in,
within, beyond; out, out further until

atmosphere, gases, stars – that stark silver
poetry of stars - austere, musical, polished

to the bone; poem skeletons, master-works
in exhibiting darkness - beyond light, after

spectrum - child rainbow to full colour;
where there is no one light of morning,

no flower or moth; where the orange fox
does not run or uproot the silver feather -

angel-owl proclaim; to the ultimate poem,
mother-poem - original poem - the Word.

‘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, indubitably
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.

‘When the crude embryo careful Nature breeds,/ See how she works, and how her work proceeds;/ While through the mass her energy she darts,/ To free and swell the complicated parts,/ Which only does unravel and untwist/ Th’invelop’d limbs, that previous there exist./ And as each vital speck, in which remains/ Th’entire, but rumpled animal, contains/ Organs perplext, and clues of twining veins;/ So every foetus bears a secret hoard/ With sleeping, unexpanded issue stor’d;/ Which numerous, but unquicken’d progeny,/ Clasp’d and inwrap’d within each other lie;/ Engendering heats these one by one unbind,/ Stretch their small tubes, and hamper’d nerves unwind./ And thus, when time shall drain each magazine/ Crowded with men unborn, unripe, unseen,/ Nor yet of parts unfolded; no increase/ Can follow, all prolific power must cease.’ Sir Richard Blackmore, 1650?-1729, The Creation

‘Until now, human genes were an almost complete mystery.’ Matt Ridley, Genome, Fourth Estate, 2001

Human Genome (2a)

Unpluck your shining eyes;
time-tutored stones - bright

miracles of light’s yearning
to be seen, even in darkness -

biology’s artistic manipulation
of willing, original molecules -

by what advantage imagined,
partially configured, rehearsal

polished, to Nature’s unnatural glass -
like brilliant jewellery lay them down.

Slip easily from your supple skin,
perfectly fitted, slinky pink suit -

shapely garment of seamless weave;
rain-proof, snake-sloughed, corseted

with ribs - escape that imprisoning bone
bodice, as white harp for earth and wind;

rattle free from your broken Gothic
architecture of bones, amused skull.

Empty your heart’s red cauldron -
dampen the fiery circuitry, ticking

pump, pressured blood - pulsing
branches; excise the saintly liver,

washing, washing all the toxins
of the world - the humble bowel

remembering the fruitful processes
of earth; alchemy of meat and green

to energy, sunburst fuel in water.
Deflate - fold up internal wings,

with accordion/organ sounds -
cast off these snugly fitted feet,

like comfortable white shoes -
peel hyperactive starry hands

like kid gloves, break off
their battish stick-bones –

unwig your thatch of parasol/
pashmina hair, luxuriant scales;

winkle from rippled limpet-lips.
Hang up that clanking skeleton,

like a tailor’s dummy stripped -
uproot the thinking cauliflower;

sparkling, incessant nest of electric bees -
and what’s left, the living Genome ghost;

speckled net of shifting lights,
immaterial communications -

star patterns still speaking secret
languages with time’s first words;

chemical galaxies, messengers
in this old, communal universe -

black matter of the worm;
wing, tail, fin still snoring,

golden shimmer, shine, crackle,
as sequenced sparks luminesce,

like bright firefly talk, love,
in heavens of tropical trees.

Incandescent coils, strings switching,
blushing silver - surging, connecting,

flushing - lighting with intention -
expressing letter streams engraved

with being’s secrets; typset by Nature
in her single font, empowered by life -

rising each from heart, soul of water -
love kernel still a mystery in darkness;

orchestrating themselves - singing
into existence, touch; writing now.

And look here, curled sleeping
in the long dark, old cat-in-sun

who slept the day, found himself
among the stars – a dim pattern -

means of a tail - still-printed codes
at willing spine, bone-root knobble;

peacock-spread, almost comatose,
tea-lights in the electric cathedral,

size of furthest possible seed-stars -
but still dreaming, dozing, dreaming,

ah, of turning on those dazzling bulbs again,
that strutting, Beyonce, bootylicious shuffle;

rustling, drastic luxury, display - tugging wind
through a billion, hooked, iridescent blue hairs.

And here still, our enormous wings,
nature-painted at the shoulder - see,

by candle-light - swan-white fossils
in a holy church of bone; ourselves -

blade-nubs jagging bluntly for escape -
massive bat skeletons in Da Vinci pose;

we are the eagle still - pterodactyl -
kingfisher flash, fish luminescence;

glow-worm signalling retained -
on beckoning cliff-edge we hang,

splendid, noble beyond angelic -
animal-angels, awake, re-grown;

air roaring encouragement -
soft beaks sniffing welcome,

ambered sun, blue mother-sky -
muscular swan-shoulders bulge,

hollow-bone quiver-quills coming;
eight foot span, ox-chest - feathers

aching to sprout, like strained seed
stomachs engorged with messages

of air and light, braille earth, mouthing
water, coaxing the explosion of flower.

Free of our elaborate, working crusts -
organic evidence, presence, decoration,

the gleaming, dreaming Genome
shows us yet animal and flower,

shrew and fish, bird still hording wings;
indelibly printed with our invisible kin -

stamped with the mark of earth,
baptised with the sign of water -

our flesh in common with stars;
under this skin - already angels.