Clone
Three cows eggs and a corpse for parents.
A doting woman foster mum.
They say I'm the same as my dead daddy,
who lives on now through me and the cow.
They are wrong about that.
The thing they are missing, is
fixing my genes
didn't set who I am.
The mum who has nursed me
gave no DNA,
but the love that she brought
went a very long way.
Making me me and not he.
Thank you kind cows.
You are parents I'm proud of.
All praise to dear mother,
but Dad I'm not sure
You didn't want me.
It was you you were seeking.
Another long life
from a cell you bequeathed.
I am that cell
through a womb kindly given.
Three sweet parent cows,
and a life all my own.
I'll have kids with a wife,
and die when my time comes.
You have died too!
You don't live through me.
Malcolm Saunders
Wed 12th Mar 2008 10:18
Hi Clarissa
I wrote this some time ago when a crazy religious cult called the Raelians claimed that they had cloned several human babies. They were most probably lying just to get some media coverage, but it did cause speculation in the press that some very rich old men might be making discreet enquiries to see if they could produce exact copies of themselves before they died.
The reason that I have posted it again now is that a company has started advertising that it will clone pet dogs for people who can't bear the thought of their loved pet no longer being with them. Cloning of mammals is now perfectly possible and as things like this pet replacement develops it is more and more likely that humans will be cloned.
It is nothing to fear. After all, identical twins are clones of each other, but those people who think that they can get some sort of immortality in this way are deluding themselves. that is part of the point I am making in the poem.
I am, of course, immortal because my great works will live on in cyberspace after I have eaten and drunk myself out of my abused body. ;-)