When their cosmology
grows soft and spongy
and unreal, the
old cosmologists
get touchy. They feel
they should have
held it off, they should
have known about it
in advance, they
should have stretched
the interstellar cloth
or sown a row of stars
along a rift just to the left
of Mars or guessed
about a pin-sized patch
of purple gas or grafted
comets tail-to-tail,
and thus or otherwise
suppressed the drift;
something that just happens
at certain stages
but a private test failed
moment by moment
as age is.