Geneticist as driver, down the gene
codes in, let's say, a topless coupe
and you keep expecting bends,
real tyre-testers on tight
mountain passes, but instead it's dead
straight, highway as runway,
helix unravelled as vista,
as vanishing point. Keep your foot
down. This is a finite desert.
You move too fast to read it,
the order of the rocks, the cacti,
roadside weeds, a blur to you.
Every hour or so, you pass a shack
which passes for a motel here:
tidy faded rooms with TVs on
for company, the owner pacing out
his empty parking lot. And after
each motel you hit a sandstorm
thick as fog, but agony.
Somewhere out there are remnants
of our evolution, genes for how
to fly south, sense a storm,
hunt at night, how to harden
your flesh into hide or scales.
These are the miles of dead code.
Every desert has them.
You are on a mission to discover
why the human heart still slows
when divers break the surface,
why mermaids still swim in our dreams.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
I'm right there on the highway in the driver's seat with him.