“And so it goes in the cruel and carnivorous universe”
-New York Times
I read today in the morning daily that a giant
black hole in a nearby galaxy
has ripped apart a wayward star and spread
one half of it in a whisker of doom, and spit
outward the other half in a messy trail
of light. Even the universe is in chaos, wrecked
into a celestial scuffle—stars and stripes
of gravity waves tearing apart a gaseous cosmos
gestating, then birthing, light years away. I think,
then, not of Jupiter and Earth, but the smaller universe
cupped within the body of my child—
unpredictable galaxies growing pink
globes of him, disobedient flowering
of toxic nebulae—where no waves can rip or even keep
in check the odd progression of genes, as he fades
slowly away into a gentle bed of breeze.
READ MORE
Black hole drags star to dusty death [New York Times]
Tanmoy Das Lala is a poet based in Boston, Massachusetts, who loves exploring the intersection of humanities and medicine through the medium of poetry. His works have appeared or are forthcoming in JAMA, Neurology, Journal of Medical Humanities and American Journal of Nursing.
Artist rendering of a star destroyed by a black hole courtesy of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
