Forfatter: Jacob Gammelgaard

🇬🇧 Compass and Cryptochromes

I - A nest of robins

1294.   Yesteryear, a mild and early summer,
        Flowerboxes in bloom on the facade;
        Right under my study window
        A box of new pelargonias.
        I was just feeling the plants
        My fingers around the roots,
        Because it feels good, and then:
        Suddenly something alive, downy,
        Pulsating and warm to the touch
        Hidden in there: a robin’s nest.

1295.   I confess, I had seen something,
        When I stood by the window:
        A quick flicker, a brown shadow,
        Perhaps af flapping of wings,
        So, I did know something was there,
        No, someone; but a nest?
        It didn’t occur to me,
        Even if it should have;
        Dolus eventualis, they say:
        Throw that match, give that shrug;
        Mess around that flowerbox, so what?
        Let happen that which happens.

1296.   Robin chicks, four, five of them,
        Scuttled away in panic,
        Dropped from the ledge to the ground,
        Spread out into hiding, disappeared.
        The robin mother calling,
        Plaintive, I assume, desperate,
        I should think; and me, careless,
        Destroyed that years brood;
        Clumsy, stupid, culpable.

II - Trek south

1297.   Only a third would survive
        The first trek to North Africa
        And the flight back here again:
        Shot by hunters, fleeced by crows,
        Poisoned by peasants, eaten by cats,
        Gobled by owls, smashed by machines,
        Dead from exhaustion and lost,
        Diverted by radio frequencies,
        Lethal traps of light pollution,
        Glass facades and glittering cities,
        Robbed of food and resting places;
        Every year billions perish.
        But still, some of them survive
        The first trek, now more experienced,
        With landscapes, contours and
        The highlights of the route etched
        In their one-gram brains.

1298.   With thanks to robins
        We now know, roughly,
        After ten thousand years,
        How birds navigate the globe.
        The answer is magnificent, I think,
        Like also the science,
        The imagination, the inventiveness
        That made it possible;
        In short, all that empathy,
        That makes wonder into science,
        And science into poetry.

III - The navigation of birds

1299.   Birds, all of them apparently,
        Can navigate around the globe
        On the earths' geomagnetic fields.
        They sense direction and position
        By picturing the geomagnetic field
        With an accuracy of a few inches
        Across thousands of miles. 
        
1300.   Robins have been studied
        For more than half a century;
        Enclosed in cages and containers,
        Turned, rattled and moved,
        Radiated with magnetic fields,
        Subjected to illumination in
        Blue, yellow, green and red.
        Blindfolded, anaesthesised,
        Exposed to radio waves,
        Magnets upended north and south
        But robins didn’t care,
        Tissue samples extracted,
        Stacks of biochemical diagrams.
        This is what they found:

1301.   Robins have a sense, more than one,
        That perceives geomagnetism,
        An extremely weak impuls of energy,
        Many millions times less
        Than it was thought possible
        To detect with organic senses;
        But it is certain that they can.

1302.   Studies shows that the “compass” of robins
        Has no north-south polarity
        As the human technical compass;
        A self-projecting concept
        About other animals’ sence of direction.
        No, robins perceive the inclination
        Of the geomagnetic waves
        From pole to geomagnetic equator;
        It’s an inclination compass!
        Robins perceive the angle
        Of the geomagnetic waves
        Bearing towards or away from
        The magnetic equator,
        Where the angle is zero.
        Thus, the robins know
        In which direction to fly.

1303.   Robins can also detect
        The strength of the magnetic field,
        Which is strongest at the poles
        And weakest at the equator,
        Infinitely weak, in fact,
        Measured in mili- or microtesla,
        Weaker that the magnetism
        Under a high voltage cable,
        Weaker than the murmur of electrons
        In the body of the bird itself.

1304.   By knowing magnetic intensity
        Robins can find their position
        Along a north-south axis.
        Jointly with the other compass -
        The inclination of magnetic waves,
        Which indicates direction -
        Bird can perceive something close
        To a latitude and longitude.

1305.   Where there is external stimuli,
        There needs be a receiver.
        Hence, for years, they looked
        For the robins' magneto-receptors;
        What are they, where are they, and
        How do they work?

IV - Cryptochromes

1306.   From quantum mechanics is known
        A phenomenon called radical pairs:
        Two molecules exchange electrons
        And thus change their electrical charge.
        When a radical pair is formed
        The molecuels begin to spin,
        Either in parallel or opposite.
        Thus, two electrical states occur:
        State at rest and state of signal.
        A radical pair changes states
        Millions of times in microseconds.
        The spin, we now know, is affected
        By the geomagnetic field.

1307.   Researchers formulated af theory
        An epiphany, in fact, in the ‘80s,
        That radical pairs are the key
        To robins’ geomagnetic sense:
        And because the radical pair
        Requires light to be formed,
        It must be in the eye of the bird.

1308.   In the year 2000 researchers proposed
        That the receptor is a molecule
        In the eye of the robin and other birds.
        This protein, called a cryptochrome,
        Forms radical pairs in a spin
        When hit by rays of light.
        The theory holds that magnetic waves
        Affects the spin of the radical pair
        In parallel and opposite directions.
        The spin creates electrical impulses,
        That send on-off signals to
        A biochemical signalling function,
        Which can be seen as a “lever”
        On the outside of the cryptochrome.

1309.   Cryptochromes occur in birds eyes
        At the tip of the optical rods.
        As the cryptochromes spread
        Across the arch of the retina
        The bird can “see” the direction
        Of incoming magnetic waves. 
        In the same way that animals and birds
        Detect direction with a pair of ears.

1310.   Researchers have explained biochemically
        How radical pairs in the cryptochromes
        Fire off neuro-transmitted impulses
        To the optical centres in the birdbrain.
        There, we must believe, the robin,
        In a way that we might never know,
        Is able to “see” the earth's magnetic field;
        This “vision” or this “image” or
        This sensory perception is a “map”
        That the bird will need
        To find its way, to know the route;
        A “map” in the form of light? shapes?
        Pixellated fields? Wavy lines?
        A “map” that fits the “compass”:
        Memorised routes, main landmarks
        Or something quite different; spectres of light,
        Ultraviolet or infrared, or maybe
        Magnetic properties in the landscape.
        Everything is possible.

1311.   Birds have developed other senses
        For use in their navigation:
        The beaks of birds contain magnetite,
        The most magnetic mineral known.
        Biochemical processes in the beak
        Sends neuro-transmitted signals
        To part of the bird’s brainstem;
        Here, maybe, is the neurologial path
        To sensing geomagnetic intensity.

1312.   For certain, birds also use vision,
        Smell, memory, experience,
        Mountains, seas, coastlines,
        Maybe sound, temperature, wind,
        Maybe a fifth or sixth method
        Of sensing place and direction.

V. A larger world

1313.   A new insight, a larger world,
        That will become as natural
        To my children and grandchildren,
        As the the "compass needle" of birds
        Was to me, when, as a boy
        I watched the swallows leave.

1314.   To a brood of robin chicks
        Endowed with global gifts
        They never lived to use;
        Inadvertently destroyed,
        Stroeby Beach, summer of 2022.
        In memory.

During the past 75 years, a large number of researchers have contributed to the accumulated knowledge on the navigation of birds using the earth's geomagnetic field. It is impossible for me to mention them all here; but let me point to a few whose articles have been a gift for me to read: Klaus Schulten, Thorsten Ritz, Henrik Mouritsen, Peter Hore, W. Wiltschko, R. Wiltschko.

Ed Yong An Immense World (2022) is a superb introduction to the sensory perceptions of living beings and I warmly recommend it to everyone. The book's chapter on the ability of birds for optical navigation using the earth's geomagnetic field furnished me with knowledge and inspiration for the poem above.  


New in Index Ten Thousand:
Robin's nest ◦ 1294, Flowerbox ◦ 1295, Brood ◦ 1296, Cat: domestic ◦ 1297, Light pollution ◦ 1297, Robin ◦ 1298, Science ◦ 1298, Earth's geomagnetic field ◦ 1299, Radio waves ◦ 1300, Impulse ◦ 1301, Equator ◦ 1302, Electron ◦ 1303, Compass ◦ 1304, Magneto-receptor ◦ 1305, Radical pair ◦ 1306, Electrical charge ◦ 1306, Geomagnetic sense ◦ 1307, Chryptochrome ◦ 1308, Magnetic waves ◦ 1308, Rods: eye ◦ 1309, Landmarks ◦ 1310, Visual centre ◦ 1310, Navigation ◦ 1311, Sense of direction ◦ 1312, A larger world ◦ 1313, Gifts ◦ 1314.

🇬🇧 Spider on a Headstand

376.  A spider weaves its web
      Above the headstand one day;
      We lie beneath, watching.

377.  I think: A net to catch imaginations;
      My love thinks: You will be pissed on.
      I say: You lack entomological knowledge.
      My love says: You lack life experience.

378.  The spider conceives of flies,
      Of eating its mate; she sees 
      Coming generations.


New in Index Ten Thousand:
Spiderweb • 376, Imagination • 377, Mate: spider • 378

🇬🇧 On the pattern in a stand of nettles 

142.    A stand of nettles grows up on exposed soil along the fence. Here are flickers of sun and effects of shadow. Here is the smell of soil, the air is mild. The colours are yellowish, green, delicate green, almost white.

143.   The stand is sligtly rounded with the highest stalks in the middle. The height decreases evenly towards the sides, about one meter at its highest and with a circumference of about three adult pathoms.

144.   The stalks are slender, edged and strait, and stand in visible mutual distance, a good hundred of them on subterranean tubers.

145.   Wonderful parataxis! The leaves sit in pairs in rising and descending spirals on the upper part of the stalk. Not one leaf touches another. All stalks are turned to avoid all other stalks and leaves across the entire sunfacing surface of the stand in a green, sharp-toothed pattern.

146.   This pattern has no exact reptitions, no definite form. It weaves, waves, approaches, deviates, turns, angles and fills out all illuminated space in three dimensions. The stalks sway, a breath of air stirs, but the formation of the leaves is maintained.

147.   Remove one leaf, just one, and the unity is destroyed. Everything is fitted in, calibrated and adapted to sunlight and the dispersion daylight. A perfect, serrated harmony.

148.   We have no word for the reciprocal, dynamic placement of leaves determined by location, height, aspect, light, landscape and moisture.

149.   But we might call it the energy in a collective of plants. We might call it the ability of the stand of nettle to arrange itself spatially in a given place under given conditions.

150.   We might call it a manifestation of an organic principle and expression of Zhang Zai’s concept of li, the force that determines the shape and character of all things. We might say, that this li applies also to individuals acting in coordination.

151.   We might say, that li creates a complex aesthetic expression that is discernible to us humans.

152.   Because we are bound by the ineluctable modality of the visible. Harmony lies in the eye and cannot be conceived in words.

153.   I put away language. I remove my clothes and stand naked in front of the nettles. I am not aesthetic, certainly not beautiful, but roughly symmetrical, functional, and dangerous.

154.   Now we are equal, the two of us. My skin against your sawteeth, my symmetry against your harmony. My evil against your poison. I hold out my hand. My image. My brother **). 

*) Zhang Zai (1022-1077) was a significant Neo-confucian philosopher and metaphysian during the Song Dynasty.

**) In memory of Charles Baudelaire (1821-67), Les Flerus du Mal, 1857.

New in Index Ten Thousand:
Nettles • 142, Stalk • 143, Tuber • 144, Surfacing • 145, Parataxis • 145, Pattern • 146, Harmony • 147, Breath of air • 147, Moisture • 148, Energy: plant collective • 149, Li • 150, Aesthetic • 151, Eye • 152, Symmetry: Homo s.• 153, Evil • 154.

🇬🇧 Grey Morning Before Rain

Sounds and air fall
To the ground. Silence.
Movements sink down
To the ground. Silence.
Trees falter and halt,
Plants pause.

The crust of earth,
Fungus, humusfibres
Heavenward, waiting.
Bacteria hesitate,
Beetles, millipedes stop,
Roottips open up.

Daylight sinks, grayish,
Covers the ground.
Reflections fade
Colors turn flat.
Depth and effect
Plain, effaced.

Only smells augment,
Cool, viscous.
The inner zone
Closest to the body
Expands, absorbs,
Wind from the sea.

Smell and tast mingle,
Mold and cool moisture;
The umami of air condenses.
Air exhaled inhaled,
Vapour exchange soundless,
Waiting.

No mechanics,
No machines,
No metaphors.
Timeless.
Heavy moisture breaks.
Rain.

🇬🇧 The Umwelt of the Gardenspider Spawn

301.   The garden spider’s
       Clump of spawn:
       Pinhead yellow bodies,
       Black behinds.

302.   Hatched in a sack
       Of golden buds
       Suspended on straws,
       A bush or flowercups.

303.   Come closer,
       Pluck a string:
       Golden spots spread
       On silky threads.

304.   Floating movements
       Suspended in oil;
       Viscous slo-mo,
       A silent explosion.

305.   The spidersphere
       Dispersed one final time
       Across swinging bridges
       Towards the sunset.

🇬🇧 Tanbark Beetle

661.   She who has seen a tanbark beetle
       Is a lucky critter:
       Wingcovers are shiny bluish-green.
       Long, segmented antennas,
       A full bodylenght long
       Finely balanced down and across
       Bulging black droplets of muscle
       On reddish upper thighs,
       Brownish-yellow thorax
       And a small black head.

662.   We experience in glimpses
       We see in sequences
       Few seconds in duration.
       Our attention 
       Is mostly blind.
       But now and the
       The moment is propituous
       And we see; really see.

663.   The tanbark beetles is there
       Suddenly among the logs,
       Completely alive, shy,
       But not afraid.
       Just watchfull.
       Half a minute
       And she scurries off;
       Finds shelter and lays eggs
       In my stack of firewood.

664.   I relish the moment.
       A small performance
       In the unending variation
       Of insect- and beetlelife.

665.   Life is expansive
       And my empathy with beetles
       Has grown a little.
       This is what I call
       An expanded day.

666.   I add the barkborers name
       To the common mailbox
       Of species on my lot.
       A pedestrian passes by, looks,
       Asks me: “Tell me, what’s that, will ya.
       I reply: “Awh, just practical biophilia.

🇬🇧 The Blackbird’s (half) mid-morning nap

688.    He’s settled in a sycamore
        A quiet mid-morning
        Hidden by the leaves.
        I think he’s dozing.
        The body is still,
        The head sinks down,
        The neck withdrawn into the body.
        The eyelids close up,
        (It's’ a bird!).

689.    The blackbird sleeps,
        Or dozes, or something else,
        At least on one side,
        Just like the swifts,
        It is believed.
        Maybe the other side is awake,
        But I don’t think I’ll ever see it.

670.    If nothing else, I see
        Half a bird asleep.
        The body is at rest.
        The tip of the beak is lowered.
        Dreams in one half of the brain,
        Visuals in realtime in the other?
        Can he close down hemispeherically?

671.    After a few minutes
        He raises up his head,
        Opens his beak.
        The body still calm,
        Legs pulled up under him.
        He is waking, half or whole.

672.    He scouts about
        As all birds:
        Head and neck in jerks;
        Quarter or half turns,
        First to one side,
        Then to the other side.
        Repeated, watchful.
        A minute or two.
        The eye with its yellow ring;
        The regard stiff, black.
        Here, all is silent.

673.    Branch and leaves flap,
        He’s gone.
        He wanted time
        For himself.
        A quiet moment
        In the rush of the day.
        I have spied on him.

Small crane's-bill

1286.   This fall, small crane’s-bills,
        After years of discrete growth
        Scattered in the summer garden,
        found a breakthrough as brawns.

1287.   Breaking out of the garden asylum
        The crescent shape flowerbed
        Around the small appletree
        For worts and perennials in exile
        Threatened on their growth
        In cancelled gardens.
 
1288.   First, they took the flowerbed,
        A cover around the other plants:
        Burnet, orpines and mints.
        Then they grew out across the lawn,
        Close the high-mown paths.
        From there up and across old swards,
        Around the tufts of wild oregano,
        Under the small elderberry tree
        Forward among the rival groundelders and
        Spearpointed black- and boysenberry shoots.

1289.   Crept under the clothes-dryer,
        Moved along the edge of pond,
        Usurped space among the rhubarbs,
        In between the white yarrows,
        Growing freely in the tall grass,
        Extended further along the terasse
        Turned to the monastary flowerbed.

1290.   A spectacle of leaf patterns,
        Crescendo of green fertility,
        A vegetal triumph in a summer
        Divided into four parts:
        Wet, warm, parched, warm:
        An ambush of many plants
        That budded a second time,
        Like the small crane’s-bill,
        Who took it’s chance, helped by
        A planet at its tipping point,
        For an explosion of leaves
        In the enfeebled fall.

Eleftherna Venerations

485.	Ve gave them our best venerations
        Here on the mountain in Eleftherna,
        Ve spawned seed, acorns and nectar
        On stony ground, among prickly straws,
        In deep ravines, on stony cliffs.

486.	Venerations grew forth
        In the lazy dust, the swidden heat,
        In the time it takes
        A kermes oak to sink into the ground,
        In the time it takes
        A city to be reduced to rubble,
        Upon old stones,
        Among antique seeds.

487.	Come in under my shadow
        And ve will show you,
        What a seed can really do;
        Warrior, slave, senator, matriarch,
        Here where the stone stands,
        Where you were lowered down,
        Sacrificed, forgotten and dug up again.

488.	There, ve raised a memorial:
        My fruit at the headstone.
        On necropolis now they stand:
        The two ladies of Eleftherna,
        Fitted into each others shapes,
        Composite sisters in stone and wood,
        Until ve, an olive olding,
        Decays and withers to dust,
        While the stone remains
        From my veneration to the next.

489.	Come down into the gulley
        And ve will show you,
        What fig trees can really do;
        Keep the mountain in a grip
        For coming generations.
        Ve hold your memories and knowledge,
        Half secret, half hidden,
        Urns, amphoras, weapons, shields;
        The little ox and the hind half in leap
        Caught in fired clay,
        Hammered into gold.

490.	Come in under this wall
        And ve will show you,
        What ivy really wants:
        Along the agora, 
        Down the mountain side,
        Overflowing ancient walls,
        Descended in straight line
        From ancient seeds,
        Growing venerations of ivy
        In depth and glory of shiny leaves.

491.	Approach,
        Ve are living layers
        Of sun-baked, sucking, slicking bees.
        A buzzing ruckus
        So loud, that you stop,
        In wonder at what you see:

492.	Ve show you the queens of the city,
        And Elefthernas reiterations:
        All the temples, all art,
        The tower, the earth quake, the columns,
        All the villas, the cisterns,
        All states, all wars.
        Ve have seen generations
        Stack these stones and
        Sleep under these stars.
        And here ve stand
        Until they meet again.

New in Index Ten Thousand:

Ravine ◦ 485, Veneration ◦ 486, Kermes oak ◦ 486, Shadow ◦ 487, Ve ◦ 487, Sisters ◦ 488, Gulley ◦ 489, Fig tree ◦ 489, Hind ◦ 489, Ox ◦ 489, Ivy ◦ 490, Ancient ◦ 490, Ruckus ◦ 491, Slicking ◦ 491, Earth quake ◦ 492, Queen ◦ 492.

Glossary: Ve is the vegetal identity and personal pronoun. Veneration is the vegetal generation and keeper of the ground.

Eleftherna is the ruins of an ancient city on Crete, inhabited from ca. 900 BCE to 800 CE.

1259.	What is the pride of fish?
        I mean, how do they look,
        A proud fish?
        With bearing, head held high,
        A poised fish?
        I mean, do they feel pride?
        If yes, or just if,
        About what?

1260.	About their own strength, mobility,
        Evolutionary excellence,
        Ability to grow, to hunt, to evade,
        Ability to spawn?

1261.	About their knowledge of water
        Their food, the enemy, the flock?
        The shoal, the population, the speed,
        Shiny scales, deep sea organs,
        Anatomical perfection?

1262.	Is it the curving spine,
        The whip of the tail?
        Streamlined organics,
        The body coordinated
        Into one movement, at once?

1263.	Or is it a pride
        About everything as a whole?
        I mean, the domain of fish:
        The ten thousand ways of water
        To be lake, to be sea;
        Enormous communities of beings,
        Landscapes of water, air and light,
        Freedom?

1264.	Is that it?
        Fish in their domain:
        Pride and beauty in
        Cascades of ecosystems.

1265.	A proud fish,
        A wise fish,
        Gliding and feeling
        Their way through water
        In their colossal
        Flickering lighted domains,
        With the right to be fish,
        The ability to be fish,
        A free fish.

New in Index Ten Thousand:
Fish ◦ 1259, Shoal ◦ 1260, Deep sea organs ◦ 1261, Streamlined organics ◦ 1262, The domain of fish ◦ 1263, Ten thousand ways of water ◦ 1263, Pride of fish ◦ 1264, Free fish ◦ 1265.

The Danish Laws of Nature (1)

Law on Abolition of the Kingdom

198. Ve do see how everything alive has a desperat urge to live. How everything alive is a desperat act of staying alive. How this desperation extends without pause to the boundaries of the kingdom.

199. Ve notice the existence of categories. Categories accumulate knowledge on the part of the categoriser, but not on the part of those who are categorised. In this way we have been categorised into a state of ignorance.

200. Ve know that the Kingdom lays a ring around us. Ve are surrounded by the knowledge of others.

201. Ring is a figure of speech. Kingdom is also a figure of speech. Figures of speech are a sort of desperation that have turned into a habit.

202. Ve do see how everything alive has ways of acting. The ability to act is the universal will to be alive common to alle kingdoms; without boundaries, without categories.

203. This ability to act ve call agency. Agency is the physical, plastic, fertile form. To grow is an expression of agency. Vos agency.

204. Ve grow ourselves out of category (as a concept). 
     Ve grow ourselves out of the kingdom (as a figure of speech).

205. Ve abolish the Kingdom as a category and a figure of speech.

206. The Kingdom no longer exists.


New in Index Ten Thousand:
Agency • 203, Desperation • 201, Ability to act • 202, Category • 204, Alive, staying • 198, Kingdom • 205, Ring • 200, Knowledge • 199.