Untainted

Poem by Gene Twaronite

Inspired by the character Anne Clayborne in Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson. A geologist, she was opposed to terraforming and became the ideological founder of the Red movement.

If life proves to be the rule

rather than the exception,

most precious are the places 

where nothing ever dies 

and matter never tries 

to breathe or reproduce

and become something it’s not— 

an ageless dance of

inorganic animation,

uplifting, flowing, and eroding

in fractured monumental sculptures,

crystalline flowers

and mineral-stained murals—

a pristine place where 

no one has gone before

and never will, 

untainted by life’s

original sin.