by DavidKM
UNDER MARS
Life goes on - following the residual heat
on its terminal Journey to the Center.
Cities the size of countries,
abandoned millennia ago,
desiccated and compressed,
conceal deeper and far greater metropoli
whose inhabitants have forgotten surface
and sun in their pursuit of the
dwindling warmth about which
revolves their world.
The arts glorify conduction, thrift, adaptation,
or bemoan the vampiric seduction of heat by the
cold, dry regions
from which the People have been inexorably
driven.
Legends never speak of sky, stars, open spaces,
but tell only of a time when the tunnels throve -
heat was plentiful,
water ubiquitous,
and gravity strong,
Once, an expedition was sent to the high regions -
to seek out the ancestral tunnels wherein the People had been born.
Through the miles of desiccated necropoli the seekers climbed,
struggling with ever-increasing weight, collapsed tunnels, cold, and drought.
The survivors turned back after a 1,000-mile trek into
the frigid immensities of abandoned graveyards,
still untold miles from their unrecognized goal.
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On the surface, colonists from the third planet
huddle under domes, tailor lichens, marvel at red stony vistas.
There are no ruins -
the tenuous atmosphere has obliterated them.
The two races can never meet, never suspect each others' presence
one on, and one within, the cooling corpse of the red planet.