Beautiful Celia
A mute night in the beginning
of the Catastrocene,
the new century of catastrophes.
And a majestic creature,
Celia, the last Pyrenean ibex,
lies under a fallen tree.
Head down in a maroon pond
reflecting winter stars,
horns curved like question marks.
Her unseeing eyes are stuck
in the still sky, tears frozen like gems,
the world is one less now.
Three years after, she is wet and warm
again under the cold lights
of a laboratory. A new ibex is born
from the tissue of the last one,
breathing the sterile air until her lungs
collapse in her tiny body.
Now the beautiful Celia is marked
as the first being
that has gone extinct twice.
Pyrenean Ibex (Capra pyrenaica pyrenaica)
When I hear the word extinction, I feel a spasm in my lungs; it must be a physical echo of the biological loss. And before the word de-extinction, I hold my breath. Because the prefix de- comes from Latin “off, from” and it marks reversal, removal. But how possible is it to reverse extinction, something more dreadful than death itself?
Still the Catastrocene, our 21st century of catastrophes, began with a choking tragedy: a double extinction. On 6 January 2000, Celia, the last Pyrenean ibex, died under a fallen tree in northern Spain. Then in 2003, Spanish scientists cloned her from frozen skin tissue, marking the first-ever cloning of an extinct being. However, the baby clone died within minutes of birth due to severe lung defects. And in that fragile moment of breath, this subspecies became the first in history to go extinct twice.
So I dedicate my poem to beautiful Celia, who died twice in the liminality of de-extinction and in the sterile grief of a laboratory where the world became one less again.
Thanks for reading.
Özge Lena