The Future of Life

Dearbhaile Casey

Sentient, spoken, speculative, soft
Defying the laws of nature,
Defiant, full stop.

Gifted by the blind watchmaker,
With comprehension of our thoughts,
We spoke, we learned, we built and fought.

Now I am the watchmaker,
Determined to bequeath
The baton of consciousness to my own sown seed.

Sentient, spoken, speculative, hard
Scripted, debugged,
Inorganic, unscarred.

Marvelling with pride at my design with reason,
Naïve of how "hello world!” may soon commit treason.

Blindly I hand my creation a knife,
Now a victim, undermined.

The future of life.

The Science

This poem was written after I was prompted to read What is Life? by Erwin Schrödinger. While his work was written in the 1940s, today we find ourselves better understanding what carbon-based life is but asking what the future of life might look like, and how it might be different from what exists now. Will the energy that produces life as we know it today be the same energy that powers life in the future? As highlighted by Erwin Schrödinger, these philosophical questions were, and continue to be, inextricably linked to scientific achievement and discovery.

The Poet

Dearbhaile Casey is a PhD student working in both University College London and Trinity College Dublin, whose work involves unravelling relationships between the deeper branches in the animal tree. While a PhD takes up a lot of time, Dearbhaile still finds some time to write poetry and make music to nurture an artistic side.

Next poem: Time Crystal by John Oughton