Shell Galaxies in Pisces

Peculiar, small variancees

In burning, vast carapaces,

From where you are, you can hear their

Dreams sloshing about quietly

Within the roaring combustion

Of endless nuclear furnaces—.

One writes endless since these places,

These furnaces that will exhaust

Their consumptive fires finally,

Nevertheless show no reverse—

The more advanced the telescope,

Then the older galaxies found,

No signs of stopping—endlessly—

And since the dreams within burning

Have no boundaries to their thoughts,

Suggesting it’s likely the same,

Quiet breathing for all their dreams

Which, unlike yours, do not distort

Or enlarge waking emotions,

Do not, ever, in fact, awake—

What discussions are there, out there—

What if there’s language but no life?

No worst-best gift to be given,

No worst-best horror to be wrenched

Away? Evenings, years ago, when

You could still pretty well walk, you

Went out ahead of a sunset,

Noting how lights could be confused

In your head—planet, star, so forth—

But more how all the emptiness

Hid massive galaxies from you,

The way a cup of spring water

Nursed mobs of infusoria

In its apparent clarity . . .

What if there’s language but no life?