Was the Cosmic Bubble
And the Bubble was without form
And brightness was upon the face of the void
A few milliseconds later
Expansion had occurred
And the Universe was lumpy
As it is, lo, unto this day
As is confirmed by satellites
And the plasma cooled, and the atoms associated
And upon the surface of the newly-formed planets
Yea, and perhaps even also in the interstellar spaces
Surface catalysis caused polymerisations
And on Earth lightning, and deepsea thermal vents
And volcanoes, and hot springs
All of these were energy sources for the cooking of the primal soup
And nucleotides came to be, and short oligoribonucleotides,
And amino acids, and lipids
Bilayers and multilayers did the lipids form
And so did they entrap primitive ribozymes
Which did replicate themselves crudely according to their kinds
And mutated, and made more ribozymes
And to each a different function:
So there were the polymerases
And the proto-ribosomes
And the spliceosomes
And the primitive tRNAs
And the reverse transcriptase, and eventually also the DNA,
which was a partner to the RNA
And a better information store, though less generally useful
So it came to be that DNA usurped the role of RNA
And RNA was cast out into the proto-cytoplasm
Where it was a messenger, and an enzyme
And a helpmeet to the DNA
Though some of it escaped as viruses
Renegade genomes, beyond the cell
In the outer darkness
Where there is wailing, and gnashing of teeth
(For no obvious reason)
And the DNA waxed fruitful
And it multiplied bounteously,according to its kinds
And it made new kinds, by mutation
As the polymerases were not so accurate yet
And Urkaryote begat Bacteria and Archaea and Eukarya
And the Archaea and Eubacteria did excise all or most of their introns
And stayed small
While Eukarya kept theirs, and grew
(Though there is lately some mystery about eocytes)
And divers Bacteria did enter Eukarya
Endosymbiotes they became
Which would later greatly occupy Lyn Margulis
And begat more unto their kind, and evolved
Mitochondria and chloroplasts did they become
And possibly peroxisomes also
And the kinds did multiply all over the face of the planet
And maybe also on other planets, as claimed by NASA
And perhaps also in the void
And did change the face of it, and the air above the ground
To an oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere they did change it
By photosynthesis, mainly
And this did allow more energetic metabolic processes to occur
Which allowed more complex organisms
Which meant that, after three billenia
Animals could come to be
And it was so
That slimy things did crawl, with legs
Out of a slimy sea
And although large bolides did rain down upon the
Earth
Yea, and comets
So as to cause ice ages and mass extinctions
So did the DNA keep multiplying and evolving
To make ever more complex organisms did it evolve
Until it came to pass
That apes did come down from the trees
In the dry Pleistocene did the apes walk
And swim also, If one is to believe Elaine Morgan
And "The Descent of Woman"
But I digress...
And they evolved to fit the new niche
Larger brains did they acquire
And upright carriage
And other problems
And lo, they did search for Meaning
And Truth
And Food and Sex also
And they did become confused
So they invented religion
To explain that which happened
And it came to govern them, so that they were not free to think
And were reluctant to take their clothes off
Which is the cause of some of the problems