Astronomy for the Damned (The Lonely Astronaut)

From the atmospheres and oceans of the primeval Earth

These molecules of me...

Here is the information, the nucleic acids of words.

This instant in the billionfold history of a planet.

The instincts of the hunter-gatherer.

Climb the steps of the ziggurat, astronaut,

Ascend into the cockpit of time.

Listen to the stars,

Speaking in the language of dolphins.


Stars,nurses of life and death,

We are your holy barbarians.

Fish,reptile,mammal,human,

An embryo is evolving in the womb.

The thoughts of every animal on earth

Are in my brain.

Can the elegance of science

Redeem me?


To hike the mountains of Mars

Is my vocation;

Gas, dust and stars,

Billions on billions of stars,

Spin me a galaxy

To call my own.


Golden-helmeted for the crusade,

Jousting with stellar invaders,

I breathe the artificial air

Of unread poems.


Death and time work their magic

On my secret evolution;

The chemistry of proteins,

The neurology of brains-

My poetry!

(Lightning and ultraviolet

Breaking apart the simple molecules

Of the primitive atmosphere,

The fragments recombining

Into ever more complexity,

Then dissolving in the oceans...)


I can see great herds of trilobites hunting across the Cambrian ocean floors...

Myriads of superb adaptations succeeding one another with vertiginous speed..

I can see the first trees shoving against the sky...

God’s parasites, honey-thieves of light and air,

Carbon-pirates flying the skull and crossbones,

We sacred animals ravage the land as fast as we imagine it.

Inhaling and exhaling one another,

We suckle at the same teats.

Into the cell’s subtle labyrinth I voyage-

A galaxy evolved over aeons,

Self-maintaining, transforming molecules,

Storing energy, plotting its own reproduction,

A microdot of frenzy and patience.

Hectic nucleus, whirling coils and strands,

Is there any end to your wisdom?

Multitudinous nucleotides bear me in their sea-snake swarm...

Limitless combinations await us,

The undreamt faces and minds in the core,

Future monarchs of mankind!


The nebulae are on fire with death;

Defunct wraith-worlds drift near the core-star,

The remnant sun a small hot star,

Collapsed to unimaginable density,

Cooling with degenerate indifference

To a black dwarf.


Rorschach blobs of galaxies,

Exist for just a few seconds

Then dissolve,only to reform,

Dying, or committing suicide.

Star-clusters plunge through the Milky Way plane

And out the other side,

To slow,reverse and hurtle back again.

Hot newborn stars squawl in the spiral arms.

Behind my eyes.

In the cerebral cortex.