A Rooster for Asclepius

Per astra ad aspera
Would be closer to the mark.
In the ruined colony

On Mars, the most ambitious
Act of empire Planet Earth
Ever exfoliated,

One abandoned research lab—
Inhabited by creatures
Too small to be visible

To anything large enough
To have evolved living eyes
And by the last colonists

Begging the skies for rescue—
A program is still running
That early colonists wrote

As a winter exercise
In mental fitness, a code
Testing metaphysical

Calisthenics for AI,
In which hypothetical
Outcomes for the colony

Are weighed in terms of ethics
By subroutines the program
Graced with historical names

From the Axial Era,
Such as Laozi, Siddhartha,
And Parmenides. Right now—

Although neither the beggars
Near the end of their supplies
Of fuel, food, and oxygen,

Nor the infusoria
Invisibly digesting
The gifts given them by Earth

And evolving their own gifts,
Correlatively, notice—
The subroutine Socrates

Is toying with its own death,
Suggesting that the best use
For one’s last breath is a joke.