Written after reading the news of efforts to encode ‘poetry into a bacterium’[1]
A pipette trembles transparently—like the see-through
Sound of creation trapped gingerly in an icicle—
While a poet reads aloud, his clipped vowels,
And the centrifuge drone under the table,
Imitating some patient, yet undiscovered planet.
On the bench lie a glass slide, and rows of words,
Whose letters are applying for recommendations
For them to be anointed eligible to become
A code; and codes are applying for promotions,
To be eternalized as seeds. Only the daft pigeons
Are busy folding barbs in their wings for transient nests.
Immortality has become a label on a jar.
The indifferent bacterium eats agar and divides,
To feed the verse for a billion years,
Preserved in its flagella in invisible ink,
Covertly detected by those who have ceased to drink
Coffee, devour the news—not even weather—
And no longer suffer from bad breath; for paper
Has dissolved, and the only punctuations that exist
Reside in the helix, guarded by strongarmed
Sentries, to whom reading is debauchery.
The bacterial genes have outlasted grammar.
Our sentences of today have migrated into muscle, soil,
Pebbles, and sea—where only light can keep
Going through, if cleansed of all its formulae.
So that permanence can be summoned by order,
And order, through bacteria that cannot understand slogans.
But today is evidently the past of that future.
The hum of an incubator mimics an aboriginal apparatus
Of music, as the last vowels are sieved into the machine.
We buy a new suit for winter on discount—so the algorithm
Would have us believe. A child’s chalk drawing still lingers
In the classroom, without the hope of posterity’s applause;
Or to be signed—like merchants do—with
Brittle names, that do not have eyes or ears or noses to smell
The flaking of derelict calendars into folklores.
We are teaching a bacterium to remember our songs;
For Orpheus to fit inside a helix; for petri dishes,
To be museums; for stars to be animals in a zoo;
And for weekends and parents and children to be
Tested by bacterial students inside saline bottles—
Like those residues that archaeologists exhume
For us to worship our unintelligent forms.
[1] This poem was inspired by a news feature on literal bio-encoding of poetry—“On encoding poetry into a bacterium, literally” (The Varsity, 3 March 2024). The article’s account of experiments that translate verse into DNA (the discussion about Christian Bök’s Xenotext, besides the idea of collaborating with microbes to preserve language) stimulated the images and ethical questions that the poem explores. See: The Varsity, “On encoding poetry into a bacterium, literally,” March 3, 2024, https://thevarsity.ca/2024/03/03/on-encoding-poetry-into-a-bacterium-literally/ (accessed August 20, 2025).
Arup K. Chatterjee 