Poem: ‘Deep Time’

Science in meter and verse

Illustration of a purple and orange, sparkly sky

Masha Foya

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Cosmic Cliffs, Carina Nebula

In the depths of the depths something begins,
although in truth—the simultaneous—
it’s likely already arrived at its end,

vapors cohered, cores long burning,
diamonds smoldering within eons stacked
into depths. Always far from us, sparks begin


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to flare inside proteins. Conical shells stretch monstrous
in our own alien waters. Earth upon Earth has opened
and already come to the iced or flaming end

of everything except sludge or scales or fur. Nestled
in the hoodoo-ed peaks, stars ignite like forest fires
surging on the heights, red-hot beginning

named apocalypse. Praise it, the breath
emptying and filling. Our new Earth already
holds its end, and stars’ lives dazzle us

in their stalled, single moment. As far as we’re
concerned, it’s always now. The universe
endures. In time’s deeps, everything begins
to engulf us, red galaxies winking from the end.

Julie Swarstad Johnson, an archivist and librarian at the University of Arizona Poetry Center, has served as poet in residence at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff. She is author of the collection Pennsylvania Furnace (2019) and co-editor, with Christopher Cokinos, of Beyond Earth's Edge: The Poetry of Spaceflight (2020).

More by Julie Swarstad Johnson
Scientific American Magazine Vol 332 Issue 4This article was published with the title “Deep Time” in Scientific American Magazine Vol. 332 No. 4 (), p. 75
doi:10.1038/scientificamerican042025-5WWv8TZ5zW7hK2y2ACEpzR

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