The She-Goat and The Brilliant Bunny

The She-goat, being near-sighted, thinks the vision before her is Joyous Fields a long way off,
that it is a brilliant light, glowing and careless, that she asks it:
'Where else is there to go after such an easy life (for what is it to be dead but to want)'.
But the light doesn't answer and the goat's human bleats suddenly seem useless:
'I understand that there's a place where gods and humans once lived,
a holy ground, to test the best, once called (and, perhaps, still is) Joyous Fields.
They say it remains the home of the last of those who can still carry fire in their hands, the Word-Thunderers'.
The light shimmers more brightly and does nothing with itself, but then it speaks.

'I carry slippery generations in my belly', says the bright light,
'generations of small lives smooth as stones.  But it is very very dark inside me. 
I once was like a painting of angels, like poetry.   Now I am a giant with ambition gone wrong. 
My animal-spirit has snuck away in the half-light,
freed itself into some divinity and left me here with just a glow. 
If small humans put us on show I could light the way to green-seeming pastures of your bleats. 
I could light the way to your human-feeling
and together we could make our fortunes selling the milk of human kindness to hungry humans.'

It gradually becomes clear to the goat expressing human milk that she is speaking
to the rabbit called Alba, Eduardo Kac's art for art's sake gene-spliced into scientific life from a less brilliant jellyfish. 
The rabbit's Green Fluorescent Protein gene has brought her attention but not cognition,
a chance to shine but no knowledge of what really to do with it.
Bunny No. 5,256 or so holds the embryo of a new shining future–humankind's genesis from upright to glowing curiosity.
Conception has taken a back step into Aristotle's books.
Yet, brilliant Alba is calm with her shortcoming for she's set an old battle raging–
the artist and the scientist have a real quarrel at last:  Who is to be responsible?

'On whose conception will humankind continue', asks the She-goat. 'Or is it still a theological question? 
Does it still come down to biting that apple?'
Brilliant Bunny makes no sound, glowing like an SOS beacon,
flashing words at the goat who bleats her best with the borrowed milky tongue.
Despite imperfection they cannot avoid thinking how Science must travel crooked ways before it sees itself,
for Art, being order-seeking and louder with it, cannot act in secret. 
Squinting at the light of her glory, the rabbit pauses for a moment to consider those she was once like,
those in the Australian outback and their brighter future–brightly culled than rotting blinded.

'Who should conceive that anywhere in the future must be better than things are now
when all exits are as illusive as gates; Joyous Fields, a myth; mourning left to the likes of us;
when patents are more binding than birth certificates,' the Brilliant Bunny observes. 
'We will no more weep for horrors', says the goat with a stern face.
'We will not mourn for a girl child skirting lakes in her muddy dress.
We should hang our heads for the passing of gene experiments and make her brighter.'
'And cleaner', adds the Brilliant Bunny.  'Nor should we weep for any man caught between gates', she continues. 
'Nor should we ever sing of it', the She-goat bleats.

'But that is not why I'm sad,' Brilliant Alba says.  'My lament (such as I understand lamentation) is for Jellyfish and giants.
Who will write Solomon's songs for Jellyfish?
Will you, Goat, with your human milkness, with such power over small humans,
with your goat-will subverted to nurse their weak veins? 
I am afraid that I shall shine to no end but tabloid headlines at the bottom of my tray. 
Perhaps, so Jellyfish will see what I've come to when the rubbish washes out to sea,
my shining coat jostling flotsam as we bob down shrinking waterlines across the globe.' 
But the She-goat is silent in the face of this, this human hope mixed in with rabbit's droppings and dead Jellyfish.

First published in New England Review (Australia)