Cosmic Hunger

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 whipping round the colossus
from just enough away (you must be cautious!)
that 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.
Even a well-built quasar cannot linger
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 draw the daylight in. Still, 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.