X & Y

Everyone has an X chromosome from their mother – if you receive a Y from your father, you become a man; another X and you are a woman.

X+X =  Woman

X+Y =  Man

Union of X and Y

Under sculptural light thrown

by white stone Moon, this night,

muscled curves are the polished

work of a billion artistic years -

aeons of flesh lacquered

on our gleaming bones;

brittle silver scaffold supporting

luminous blue skin - hardened

from water, writing and air.

What matter this plastic glass,

species of labour and art,

germ of stars and earth -

to make transparent, shine

these weird nocturnal creature eyes

of your ethereal midnight twin.

What ghostly romance of dancing cells

illuminates your night body, membrane,

where spirit leaks pores like mercury -

you are an eerie blue lamp of yourself,

hearing the strange high call of stars,

white Moon mouth, uncannily

as wolf, owl or still water.

This love is primaeval and highest

both; animal and holy synthesised -

what craft of time, what patience,

to shape the interlocking tools of life,

undo combination locks of darkness

where people, coded possibilities -

cryogenic spirit among frozen stars,

are hidden armies - unconscious

as hedgehogs dreaming summer

amid all the evidence of winter.

One particular love, this very night

seeking, pinpointing - one homing

device in the whole story of the Universe,

from the very beginning, for this explosion

of X and Y; this vessel, resting place

of skull and bone, genomic switching,

brilliant chemistry - and the loyal soul

homing like a bird of prey, tethered eagle,

from God knows where, and how,

equipped only with co-ordinates

of love; where there is union, immediate

dance, art of biology - this night is holy.

‘Scientists decoding the human genome have discovered that just 78 genes separate men from women. But what are they?’ BBC News, 2003

X+X = Woman; X+Y = Man

Such genetic distillation - two letters,

simple equations of basic difference,

sex chemistry, accounting for so much;

gulfs and bridges of a diverged species.

X would never need so many deaths

to prove war is Anti-life, last resort -

the poem of victory is, in truth, clichéd,

reciting: ‘Love and Peace’, repeatedly -

espousing harmony and brotherhood -

remembering the genetics that bind us.

She learns at the sight of her own child,

what she has always known, in her seed;

defended - back and back through

all mothers, in all species - to Eve.

‘The professor, a woman, says,/ “The massa intermidea,/ one of the nerve bundles that joins/ the left and right hemispheres,/ is absent at autopsy from 85%/ of the male cadavers,/ and 15% of the female cadavers;/ nothing whatsoever is known/ of its function, no funding/ to solve the mystery of what it does.”/ Over our dissecting trays,/ the women laugh, the men/ look bewildered…’ Susan Kolodny, Neuroanatomy

XX - XY

XX

Kiss, kiss from Mother Nature;

symmetrical, balanced, tender -

marking the spot, hands joined.

XY

Kiss target; arms upstretched,

beseeching, raging, asking -

malcontent, stag; angry tree.

X+X = reproduction plus love,

particular knowledge of love -

overcoming self love; two feet

in the garden - love in Nature’s

imitation, more and more; arms

linked, plus, plus - multiplicity.

X+Y = contribution plus love,

yet something different taken

from endless genetic lessons -

establishing his human marks

in the garden; food produced –