On Heredity, Family Trees, Genealogy, Genetics

"Why waste your money looking up your family tree? Just go into politics and your opponent will do it for you" - Mark Twain

Heredity

I am the family face;
Flesh perishes, I live on,
Projecting trait and trace
Through time to times anon,
And leaping from place to place
Over oblivion.

The years-heired feature that can
In curve and voice and eye
Despise the human span
Of durance - that is I;
The eternal thing in man,
That heeds no call to die.

Thomas Hardy

From The Twelth Generation

I should like to trace my descent

to the seventh generation, and

find through the laws of genetics

what flowers hide

between horse-radish and black radish,

what cause for pride

and what to be afraid of?

...

They say that

my face and frame

resemble my father. But how to find

where our stock arises?

Leonid Martynov,

translated by Elaine Feinstein