The sun encounters permafrost, eternal and old,
Amazed: “Wait, what’s this nonsense, hold.
I am, after all, a star, and no matter how small,
Answer me now, look at me, heed my call.
Not much to boast, true, spectral class G2V,
But is not even this warmth enough for thee?
Surely it would be better, you’d bloom with life, blue and green…”
The permafrost replies: “Behind me - the death of all that’s been.
What is life to me? A trembling film midst rocks and the void.
Soon you too will fade. Come to me. Be destroyed.”

The sun is covered with spots: now fever, now chill and cold.
Its skin swells with prominences of dreams untold.
“I won’t agree to die!” - decisively it says,
And burns amid the void and stones, as long as it stays ablaze.

The permafrost phlegmatically reflects the sun’s heat away,
Notes how much time has passed, how much mass burned each day.
And though the final word, of course, belongs to emptiness and night,
There glows a little sphere - awkward and golden-bright.

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Thanks to Leah Borovoi for improving the text.