Dead Stars

Stars, both living and dead, appear throughout the poem, and represent humans’ connectedness to the natural world. In the third stanza, the speaker and the other character look up to the stars for the first time. They spot Orion, but they don’t remember the other constellations, prompting the speaker to ruminate on forgotten history and humans' forgotten connectedness to nature. By the end of the poem, the speaker is filled with a desire to protect the natural world and care for others. These hopeful and empathetic actions are larger than life, and Limón employs celestial imagery again to show that these are worthy pursuits: “[I]f we launched our demands into the sky, made / ourselves so big / people could point to us with the arrows they make / in their minds” (Lines 39-42). In the poem, living stars reawaken humanity’s connection to nature and Limón uses that spark to show that defending nature is a worthwhile pursuit.

The titular dead stars appear as well, further intertwining humans and nature. In Limón’s poem, human civilization is not disparate from nature and the dead stars enhance this symbolic connection. Humans come from stars; they’re the building blocks of human bodies.