The darkest and the most quiescent brute
gives rise to a phenomenon so bright
we see it from nine billion light years off.
Imagine how the thing would strike you if
the laws of nature tweaked themselves to let
you travel faster than the speed of light
and view the inferno screaming round the demon
from just enough away from its domain
so nearby stars don’t hear a happy slurp.
Would you be carbonized by its deadly slap?
In fact, it wouldn’t be there any longer.
Nothing in the universe can linger
for such a multiplicity of days
and years and eons. Even a quasar dies
when that gullet of a galaxy has fed
and grazed and grown, consuming all its food,
then dormant as the dogwood trees in fall
after their crowns of blazing foliage fail
to furnish chlorophyll. Yet do not wander
too near that chasm! Speaking of which, I wonder
if there’s an equally voracious threat
lurking in our Milky Way, a throat
dying for a taste of earthy meat
eyeing this living Lilliputian mote!
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