The Fixed Stars

They seem serene: pinpricks
in a slow-turning sphere,
sedate and constant backdrop to
the dramas of this earth.
But time, for them, is something vaster,
far beyond the eye-blinks of our lives.
Within it they swirl, collide, give birth,
fulfil themselves in white-hot glory
then, like us, grow old and fade
into senescence endless
even in star-time.
          Or else,
bloated and rebellious, they
choose apocalypse, achieve
a lifetime’s brilliance
in the moment of destruction.
How strange that in these
orgasms of death is born
the stuff we breathe, that forms
our bodies, gives us life.