If I were a galaxy in outer space
and wanted to find my reflection,
a mirror I'd seek so to peek at my face
while engaging in introspection.
Suppose I was millions of light-years away
in a constellation called Maiden
or Virgo, to use its correct sobriquet,
with a twin doppelgänger laden.
Might I query, ‘Oh mirror high in the sky,
midst linked arms and blueish trail flowing,
do you think my double is fairer than I?
What image is that you are showing?
‘Is it beauty you see gazing back at me,
mythopoeic in pondering mood? '—
Notwithstanding what seems to be harmony,
something's wrong with that calm attitude.
The peaceable aspect is masking a stage
of an astronomic collision
that began in an erstwhile earlier age
and will cause extensive revision.
In infrared, NGC five three three one
is a hundred billion times brighter,
it's said, than the luminousness of the Sun,
(hard to grasp for a starlit writer) .
A mirror speaks not, unless it is magic,
plus envisioning likenesses flipped.
What will that merger be, placid or tragic
in the redrafted galactic script?
The picture of two spirals interacting,
during a junction's coming to pass,
reveals the duo each other impacting,
thus to resemble a looking glass.
In the sequel by Carroll to Wonderland,
Alice climbs through to the other side
of the mirror, where she meets with peril and
Tweedledum and Tweedledee abide.
Yet our surroundings behave as reflector
much like the Moon with the tidal ebb.
Hence is futurity glimpsed as a specter
hither and thither weaving its web…
Humans cast shadows in all causal matters
touching on Nature's balance on Earth
fragilely wrought as a mirror that shatters.
Oh may we waken to life's true worth!