Category: poetry

poem for a lunch date

wonderfulexchange2 Comments

no, not mine.

(and I suggest the person in mind omit the last stanza)

Don’t Say I Said

Next time you speak to you-know-who
I’ve got a message for him.
Tell him that I have lost a stone
Since the last time that I saw him.
Tell him that I’ve got three new books
Coming out soon, but play it
Cool, make it sound spontaneous.
Don’t say I said to say it.

He might ask if I’ve mentioned him.
Say I have once, in passing.
Memorize everything he says
And, no, it won’t be grassing
When you repeat his words to me —
It’s the only way to play it.
Tell him I’m toned and tanned and fine.
Don’t say I said to say it.

Say that serenity and grace
Have taken root inside me.
My top-note is frivolity
But beneath, dark passions guide me.
Tell him I’m radiant and replete
and add that every day it
Seems I am harder to resist.
Don’t say I said to say it.

Tell him that all my ancient faults
Have been eradicated.
I do not carp or analyse
As I might have when we dated.
Say I’m not bossy any more
Or, better still, convey it
Subtly, but get the point across.
Don’t say I said to say it.

–Sophie Hannon
from Collected Poem

 

but of this tree

wonderfulexchange1 Comment

The announcement came tonight of the creation of an artificial life form.

The official announcement, at least. When I went looking for links, I gather this has been known for a few months, but I had somehow missed it.

Craig Ventner, who was at the heart of the human genome project, has created a synthetic chromosome based on a bacterium which has been pared down to what is essential for life.

(stop to breathe, while you ponder that phrase)

The synthetic chromosome is then implanted in a live cell, at which point it becomes, in effect, a new life form. There is a much fuller (and more reliable) description here if you want it.

And I find I don’t know what to think. One part of me simply has to acknowledge the skill of this and rejoice in the complexity of the human mind. Another part of me screams, ‘no, we mustn’t do this.’

What frightens me most is that there are so few people in the world who can think sensibly about both the science and the morality (not to mention the theology) of it.

How can we decide what is right when we do not begin to understand the consequences of our actions? Is there a basic taboo in place (human beings have no place creating life forms) or is this too part of freedom God gives us?

I cannot make sense of it. So I will take refuge in poetry instead:

And where do I go
from here? I have looked in
through the windows of their glass
laboratories and seen them plotting
the future, and have put a cross
there at the bottom
of the working out of their problems to
prove to them that they were wrong.

R. S. Thomas
from The Echoes Return Slow

language games

wonderfulexchange12 Comments

We haven’t had a poem for a while.  So — following the apophatic dash– Adrienne Rich’s Love Poem (XIII):

The rules break like a thermometer,
quicksilver spills across the charted systems,
we’re out in a country that has no language
no laws, we’re chasing the raven and the wren
through the gorges unexplored since dawn
whatever we do together is pure invention
the maps they have us were out of date
by years…we’re driving through the desert
wondering if the water will hold out
the hallucinations turn to simple villages
the music on the radio comes clear —
neither Rosenkavalier nor Gotterdammerung
but a woman’s voice singing old songs
with new words, with a quiet bass, a flute
plucked and fingered by women outside the law.

in The Dream of a Common Language