About Little Cosmic Dust Poem

by Chris

LITTLE COSMIC DUST POEM (1983)
John Haines

Out of the debris of dying stars,
this rain of particles
that waters the waste with brightness...

The sea-wave of atoms hurrying home,
collapse of the giant,
unstable guest who cannot stay...

The sun's heart reddens and expands,
his mighty aspiration is lasting,
as the shell of his substance
one day will be white with frost.

In the radiant field of Orion
great hordes of stars are forming,
just as we see every night,
fiery and faithful to the end.

Out of the cold and fleeing dust
that is never and always,
the silence and waste to come...

This arm, this hand,
my voice, your face, this love.

Poe, Frost, and Shakespeare: these are the names brought to mind when one speaks of poetry. However, there are thousands of poets who have bled their hearts unto paper, expressing in magnificent verse the passion of their souls. One such poet is John Haines, and he conveys the immensity of love in celestial terms.

Vast and dark, the world lies before us. Is it cold and empty. But somewhere out there, somewhere amid that lonesome expanse, there is warmth. Somewhere out there, there is love, a love so intense the darkness of space cannot subdue it. At least this is what Haines tells us as he speaks of the death of stars.

It is the remnants of stars that constitute our forms; this, science has revealed to us. But what’s more, it gives breath to our love. The “cold and fleeing dust” that races from the violence of a star’s death slashes into the darkness of space and “waters the waste with brightness;” this is the ancient celestial chaos that precedes our being.

But we are not merely what’s left of a star’s end, we are the continuation of that glory, that brilliance: we are the next “great [horde] of stars” that form every night, and just like the stars that came before us and are contained within us, we are “fiery and faithful to the end.” In this way we are stars, for we are both the remnants of ancient love and the source of future love. We will always be the “debris of dying stars.”

John Haines knows love in a way very few do. For him, love is not a transient passion, not a drive born of instinct, but universal constant. Indeed, we are love. We are the shore to that “sea-wave of atoms,” and in that sense, we are the passion he bled.