Sagittarius A Asterisk

We’ll spare you further metaphors
Involving darkness at the heart.

Today, there’s something else that grabs
Our light attention and won’t let

Us escape—how relatively
Small the heart of the monster is.

The four million solar masses
Of its pictured inner chambers

Enclosed by superheated gas
Fit in a ring roughly the size

Of Mercury’s orbit. If—if!
You had the strength to withstand it,

You could circle the whole system
And all its burning seraphim

From the perspective you now hold
On Mercury circling the sun.

You thought of the monster as huge,
Given how much must be in it,

Whole galaxy sprawled around it,
But precisely since it’s so dense,

So much of existence in it,
So much hunger creating it,

So much gravity, so much lust,
So much darkness easily fits.