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This poem is taken from PN Review 271, Volume 49 Number 5, May - June 2023.

Poems Radosław Jurczak
Elon Musk dies on Mars

for Ana Adamowicz

There’s no pain, there’s the light of sympathetic LEDs.
And hours of gazing through an armoured window
which is like watching Netflix in separate rooms,

one room is green, the other red, with no door from red
to green. It’s beautiful, the way so many things are missing.
There’s no pain. There’s the light of sympathetic LEDs,

and there’s a murmur. The transmission wheedles. It’s Earth. Your Earth,
except there’s no Earth: there’s a view of Earth
like watching Netflix in separate rooms,

with the same pair of eyes (while all eyes on Earth
are looking at you. And what they see is: peace,
with no pain.) There’s the light of sympathetic LEDs

a gesture. An airlock release. A dutiful drip.
Molecules pass through the cell membrane as if through an armoured window
...


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