after Gregor Johann Mendel (1822–1884)
I
Place in two untiring hands as many hectares of monastery garden;
breed, mongrelise, tally, catalogue with obedience, self-discipline,
three dozen pea species; cultivate the principles of heredity.
Take the Liturgy of the Hours literally. Blot out all noise of Darwin,
for Goodnesse sake. Feed in silence at grave refectory tables; forgo tonguing
pea jackets from your teeth. Later, if you must, you may mutter
over careful protein register: round or wrinkled ripe seed shape;
green or yellow endosperm; white or purple petal colour; pods pinched
or ballooned; dwarfed or drawn-out stem; flower position axial or terminal.
Kneel in your tunic, cincture; stoop in hooded shoulder. Produce the effect
of labouring for the Kingdom of Heaven. Pray unceasingly for the world, quidem.
Unsoil the spirit. Rest when you fall down. Only then, take earth scent in, in moderation.
Free education should not be taken lightly. Especially when Physics has been chosen
over Hermeneutics. Nay! Your class of observation need not entail the fornication of mice!
Plants should display equally the discontinuity of atom, God’s good benefaction.
II
And yet your work is incomplete and unconvincing. What’s this, about the presence
of absences? The potential is there in the germ, the gene, you say, and evident
in only one of three grandchildren. The Good Lord Jesus was not a blend of his chaste parents?
Be that as it may, your research must be self-reflective – recessive. Perhaps it will resurface
in some generations, after you have assumed the role of Abbott. Indeed, yes, paperwork,
as much as robes, could snag, but you have amply proven hardihood.
III
Genius, as it were, must be – like God – invisibly existent. Just unexpressed,
for now, until He recrudesces. Perhaps your lifework will revivify from the luckless bonfire,
unscathed; your papers, after all, did lie on Darwin’s bookshelf when he died; alas, uncut.