POEM

Homo Faber 2000 (After reading Homo Faber by Max Frisch) by Keith Davies
Posted October 13, 2000 · Issue 88

A blank gaze, pitiless, and reflected back; two eye-sized
VDU screens with their constantly cruising cursors,
Connected to thousands upon thousands, in a tightly woven world-wide web.
Behind each, a hominid, a human ganglion of acetyl-choline,
Bridging the synapse between e-mail messages at the touch of a mouse.

The ritual steps, between home, and car; between car, and office;
Between office, and car; and between car and home.
Over and over, turning and turning, around and around,
At the center of which personal entropy stands paralysed.

A chance meeting! A glint of an eye! A smile of recognition! An image is
born!
The mask falls! The heart flies! Chaos reigns! Renaissance!
Twenty centuries of clod and clay, baked into bricks by religion,
Are cracked by the fire of desire.

But time ticks unceasingly on...
The face hardens, the heart atrophies, the steps, slower...
Its beginning was its end; it was a stillbirth, just
As everything born will ultimately be still,
And thereby set free.

Keith Davies graduated from the Hatfield Polytechnic (United Kingdom) in 1979 after studying applied biology. But his true education began when in Malawi, Central Africa, where he worked as a volunteer plant pathologist on an integrated rural development project. Back in the U.K., he received a Ph.D. at University College of North Wales, Bangor, in biological control of soil-borne plant diseases. His postdoctoral work at IACR-Rothamsted was in biological control and immunodiagnostics. He continues at Rothamsted pursuing an interest in the microbial control of plant parasitic nematodes.