We're born into a dying universe,
like tadpoles in a drying pool of rain,
like pocket gophers on a flaring plain.
Nothing is getting better that won't be worse.
This very continent, subducted, will force
its shuddering mass to magma once again,
this galaxy collapse in a black drain.
We're born into a dying universe,

and if it wasn't dying, we wouldn't be:
Life catches in the smallest envelope,
quickens in broken possibility.
The waste of what runs down propels us up.
The ruin of novae made this heavy earth.
We die, and something novel comes to birth.