Sunday, January 15, 2006

The stuff of life

Chromosomes


If you unravel the script of life
that nature had so carefully wound,
you can stretch it like a string
to the moon and back, three times,
and tie a big bow
with the remaining slack.

We read their banding patterns,
the work of giemsa stain trapped
between the molecules of the chain,
and see homely things in the 23 pairs –-
20s look like teddy bears, 19s look like
bow ties and 3s are tall guys with blond hair.

We play 'spot-the-difference'
under the lenses; scrutinize
each spread from cell to cell
across microscopic pastures.

But we can never read into those bands --

like comparing bibles of different editions;
judging by thickness, white spaces,
and where the indexes are placed,
to say, “This bible is complete,
and the same as the previous,”
from a hundred meters away.

Every night we go to sleep and dream
of dining on bizarrely striped spaghetti.