Your reddened skies and barren soils conceal
A frozen mass, but once it was a sea
Infrared telescopes can now reveal
What could and should, but never was to be.
A mighty ocean spanned the northern realms
With winding river delta, and with lake
And whilst deuterium now overwhelms;
The absence of its sibling it can’t slake.
As age set in the pressure it did drop
The atmosphere receding day by day;
A Martian landscape water now did swap
And in the ether slowly slipped away
And so we tune our gadgets for a sign
That leaving was part of a grand design.
But even if we find life there today
How will it stop our planet’s own decay?