The Jumping Genes (Barbara McClintock)

Lyrics

[Verse 1]
You worked alone
in a cornfield
on Long Island
the way some women
work alone
in a kitchen
they have made theirs
by the fact
that no one else
has bothered
to ask
where the salt is.
You knew every plant
in the field
by sight
the way some women
know every face
in the church
they grew up in.

[Verse 2]
You looked at the kernels
on a single ear of maize
under the microscope
in the small shed
at the edge of the field
in nineteen fifty
and the variegation
was telling you
the only thing
the variegation
could be telling you,
which was that the genes
that made the color
were not staying
where the textbook
said genes stayed.
The genes
were jumping.

[Chorus]
You wrote it up.
You gave the talk
at Cold Spring Harbor
in front of a room
of the most distinguished geneticists
in the country
and they listened politely
and went back to their hotels
and agreed amongst themselves
that the corn lady
had been
in the cornfield
too long.

You did not raise your voice.
You went back
to the corn
the next morning
in the same straw hat.

[Verse 3]
Thirty-three years later
the Nobel committee
called your house
and you were already
in the field,
and you took the call
in the afternoon
when you came in for water
and you said
*that's nice*
and you went back out
to the corn
because there were ears
to look at
and the corn
had been right
the whole time
and you had been right
the whole time
and the prize
had finally
caught up
to where the two of you
were standing.

[Outro]
The corn
did not need
the prize
and you did not need
the prize
and the prize
needed
the corn,
which is the order
the universe
arranges itself in
when it is being honest.

---