“Nativity Scene in Bullet-Time”
“Nativity Scene in Bullet-Time” typifies the discrepancy between the history and the future: “If this is a fracture across time and place, where past and future hold each other’s gaze.” Nativity births the future whereas the bullets transmute the dead into the past. The people who succumb to bullets can no longer await the future for they are history. The bullets jeopardize the future immeasurably. The stoppage of bullets unfetters the future from death, but the ghosts of the bullets dawdle: “then we could take the air/beside the float-glass river,/where a busker rests her bow on a string,/and you ask what are all these flesh-ghosts thinking?” Symmons Roberts equates the busker to a flesh-ghost to accentuate the ubiquity of poignant recollections after war. The busker would be anticipated rise above the ghosts due to the class of her work that is principally pleasurable. However, the busker is a casualty of the haunting bullets too.
“Mapping the Genome”
“Mapping the Genome” explicates the convolution of charting genomes: “Geneticist as driver, down the gene/codes in, let's say, a topless coupe/and you keep expecting bends.” Genome charting is an undertaking that necessitates profound acquaintance of genetic codes. Accordingly, a non-expert would not thrive in the mapping genes because he/ she would be deficient of material aptitude for decoding the implication of every code. Furthermore, the process is erratic like the bends that conventional drivers pump into often. The outcomes of the mapping vary from one individual to another because genes are dissimilar. Genes are hereditary, so a geneticist must dissect an individual’s exclusive genetic codes before conveying results. Genetic linking calls for the utmost level of proficiency for the results to be credible.
