Chapter 321: The Suggested Copy

April the twenty-fifth, in 'fifty-three, The journal Nature printed three, one theme: DNA, sacred thread; the first, to be Cambridge: James Watson, Francis Crick, a scheme Suggested: two chains, wound; the bases pair; Adenine fits thymine; guanine, in kind, Cytosine; and they wrote: not unaware They were, that pairing, as they had designed, Suggests at once a copy's means, a way For the genetic stuff; and said the spark Came from the London work, unpublished; they Had not measured; one page, the next; the mark Of King's College, London, was on the two Remaining: Maurice Wilkins signed the one; Rosalind Franklin, Gosling, signed, too, The other; and their photograph, made one Year earlier, in that issue, their names; Franklin had measured a helix; outside, The phosphates; inward, bases; her own aims Were hers; she had not signed Cambridge's side. The April journal prints her name upon The evidence. And, 'sixty-eight, a book: Watson wrote: Wilkins showed him, early on, In 'fifty-three, the photograph; it shook His pulse to racing: his account, years past, Fifteen, not the journal; speaking of her As April's page does not; and, at the last, Take the page. Five weeks on, the two confer: May thirtieth: the implications, said; The April sentence had said copy, though; This was not finding the substance; a thread Long named before: in 'forty-four, to show, Oswald Avery, Colin MacLeod, and Maclyn McCarty, that what changed a germ Was this acid, not protein; and, at hand, The year before, Alfred Hershey, with firm Martha Chase, argued: what the virus gives Bacterium, the change, is acid, not The coat. The April page, the shape it lives; Not first news that the acid holds the plot; Erwin Chargaff weighed: adenine, the same As thymine; and guanine with cytosine; The model used the match; he did not frame The April papers. Linus Pauling's, seen That year, before: three chains; it did not hold; The Cambridge page, its own: another. Then 'Sixty-two, the prize; three named; and, as told, Franklin had died in 'fifty-eight: not then The dead receive it; but upon the page, In April, is her name; a measure, hers; And this book keeps her too, from age to age; The pairing, finite means: one chain confers Its bases on the next; a copy if The fit holds; and the copy is the thread, The sacred thread of all descent; and if We better it, that too is good; we're led By life to it. The paper says suggests, And possible: its care. And April's day, Count three papers, and whose names on each rests; Then May the thirtieth, the sequel; nay, Not the first line; the acid, known before To carry change; the new line is the shape, The copy that it lets; and, more and more, Franklin's measure; the thread none can escape.