Une Copie de Lui: Placebo

by Christine Adams Beckett

With a Nod to Sandrine Kimberlain

Betwixt the boar bristles

lay a complex tangle of

Red strands under

Stray black and steel

Grey ones.

DNA codes lay buried

within the tiny thin

Structures,

Building blocks

Of his nature.

Mitochondrial and nuclear chemicals

Could eventually reproduce

Him in an exact physical replica,

A concoction of loveliness

“Most wonderful!”

Olivia’s Shakespearean delight in

Genetic copy reveals

The fickle nature of love:

A manufacture of the brain’s desire,

A focal point,

An image.

To inject decades of sculpture

To clone artful loveliness

Is the necessary advancement.

Find a scientist who has discovered

The process by which one can

Download every second of experience

That concocted unmatched delightfulness.

Cecil Vyse’s Lucy Honeychurch

Offers a recipe for his offspring

Nurturing the same charming history

Of his beloved: A touch of country

For freshness, delayed introduction

To London for refinement.

Cesario’s female self is

Impotent to Olivia.

Every neurosynaptic pathway

Etched in memory’s personality

Made her a complex

Object subjugated to that

Unique connection,

A mere two dimensional

Suggestion of another.

The physical copy deceives

Until the clone’s Truthful kiss

Reveals he is unknown to her world.

His love will have to satisfy

Someone altogether new.

Cesario’s nurtured self thrives in

True Love’s longing heart.  His own strands

Cast off like the eunuch’s disguise,

Will remain tangled in another’s

Memory, a stray hair

Lost in his lover’s brush.