Chimeric Visions

Nous sommes le
7 Ventôse, An 214

“By injecting human embryonic stem cells into the brains of fetal mice inside the womb, scientists in California have created living mice with working human brain cells inside their skulls.”

--Rick Weiss, Washington Post, December 13, 2005, A03


In a Slovenian woods, Satan drives mice to hell:
see www.glirarium.org . . . slovenian-myth.html.
They meet him underground, he marks their ears.
There is no word on what a dormouse cares or fears!

In California, mouse immune systems were deceived
by injected human cells so young they were perceived,
the scientists surmise, as somehow “self,” not “other.”
Is it too soon to claim a lab mouse as your brother?

Human brain cells had been at some expense
induced to shine, emitting green fluorescence
by a venture-funded firm in San Diego, CyThera Inc.
So will they stand out, perhaps, if these mice think?

In every family’s future then, I see, far off, chimeras.
Your childrens’ children may have part-mouse mamas;
Satan may be your grandkids’ mouseherd in La Jolla.
(Just so you know, though, that’s pronounced “La Hoya.”)

The good news is that I’m no great shakes at vision.
At General Atomics Court,* they may get mice to fission
or fuse with what Miss Liberty thought she bought,
foolers around with stuff--Americans in short;

all we who take on thought, hoping to make a buck,
all we who play at words and sometimes give a f***,
all we who cannot hope to know what time will bring,
except it won’t be us, but quite another thing

--yet it may come to nought.


*CyThera Inc.’s address is:
3550 General Atomics Court
Building 2, Room 503
San Diego, California 92121 U.S.A.
Phone: 858-455-3708 Fax: 858-455-3962