The Stamp and the Furnace (Alan Turing)

Lyrics

[Verse 1]
You aimed
an X-ray beam
at a single fiber
of DNA
in a basement lab
in London
in nineteen fifty-two
and you waited
for the diffraction pattern
to tell you
what the fiber
looked like
from the inside,
and the fiber
told you
in a photograph
you labeled
fifty-one
in a sequence
of photographs
that were all
in your notebook
in your handwriting
under your name.

[Verse 2]
Photograph fifty-one
was the most beautiful
X-ray image
anyone had ever taken
of anything.
The cross pattern
in the center
said helix.
The spacing
of the spots
said the distance
between the rungs.
The symmetry
said double.
You wrote
all three words
in your notebook
and you did not
publish yet
because you were
not finished
and you did not
publish
unfinished work.

[Chorus]
The men
in the next building
saw the photograph
without asking
and built the model
in six weeks
and published first
and the model
was correct
and the model
was built
on the photograph
they had seen
without asking
and the photograph
was yours
and the credit
went home
with the model.

[Verse 3]
You did not know
they had seen it.
You found out later
and you did not
make the scene
you were entitled to
and you went back
to work
on a different problem
because the work
was the thing
and the work
had always been
the thing
and the next virus
you turned the beam on
was going to hold still
for you
the way the DNA
had held still
for you
and the credit
was going to sort itself out
or it was not
and either way
the beam
was ready.

[Outro]
You died at thirty-seven
of a cancer
that was probably
the beam itself
paying you back
for what
you had asked it
to show you,
and the Nobel
went to the men
and the model
four years later
and they did not
mention the photograph
in the speech.

The photograph
is still
the most beautiful
X-ray image
anyone has ever taken
of anything.
The beam
remembers
whose hands
it passed through.

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