The old stars exploded
and a grave new light began to form
in accretions of dust,
their metalled leavings.
Things broken and molten tumbled
uncontrollably, collided with the stars’
lost pillars at varying speeds. The initial
burst at the center faded.
By emptiness, some was consumed.
There was a big breather.
There was a time of great reduction,
of tossed and dismembered stuffs
and the frail light turned on itself,
folding inward, destroying most all
of its mass. It could have disappeared.
Then a huge flare fueled
by near-destruction rosed the ruins.
Scatterings of the old order,
once dispersed, drew together
with pulses and contractions,
many surfaces, many directions.
After all these pressures,
amid much spouting of gases and smokes,
you remained, trailed by your past
through piecemeal space.
You were fresh still, too fresh to trust,
the globule of an exploded triumph
soft with failure, not strong enough to carry on.
You could have been nothing,
could have been merely a mistake.
The essences shifted. The liquids rippled.
To be flat or brilliant or in between—
Even fact, before everything happens,
has no firm shape.