Two hundred million sperm
in one ejaculation;
and we are standing firm
and spouting with elation,
though but a single germ
survives to incarnation.
And much in nature throws
vast clouds into the ocean,
where myriad embryos
become a magic potion
consumed by all that goes
with food its only notion;
yet one or two survive
to adulthood and, later,
will make the species thrive
and serve up like a waiter
new young crowds that arrive
like cargo crammed on freighter.
This is how nature lives;
we should not think it foolish
eight billion of us gives
but forty fierce and mulish
posthuman narratives,
godlike as much as ghoulish,
in retrospect appearing nature’s plan
for how we cross to Nietzsche’s Superman.
*****
This poem was originally published in the Amsterdam Quarterly, although without the final couplet. I usually allow editors to make changes if they suggest them, and often the changes are an improvement that I retain. But in this case I’m afraid the science fiction speculation may be lost without those last lines: the idea that the present billions of us are on the point of being superseded by the first handful among us who achieve a godlike state of posthumanity… and that this ratio of 200,000,000 seeds being sacrificed to achieve one mature adult in the next generation is not unusual in nature.
Photo: “Stinging nettle stem with +/-15 billion seeds” by esagor is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.
Form in Formless Times 