Ode on a Martian Urn

I wrote this in May of 2014. First time it’s seen the light of day. I tend to be very critical of my older work, but I’m actually still pretty happy with this one.

Thou Art, what art thou?
No clay-fingered potter wrought thee;
no blushing poet will sing thy praise
to an enchanted crowd:
child of the god of war,
color of rust, ancient as asteroids,
bold hypercubes writhe
rough upon thy surface.
What tesseract lies empty in its
stable, bereft of children
that they might decorate thee?
Brim-full of portent,
tick-tock-ticking unabated by
ten thousand thousand years,
what clock lies in thy shivering heart?
What crystal quivers for thy sake,
counting bright femtoseconds like fireflies
from the moment of thy creation?
And what doom draws thee near,
O Martian urn?
Barren waste lies where thy home should be,
thy rivers sere, thy valleys
choked with dust, thy mountains
scraping thin atmosphere
to grope at stars.
Wilt thou bring this fate
to fledgling Earth
when this thy clock expires?
And when all is done, wilt thou
lie close and say:
“Truth is terror, terror truth;
that is all ye know on Mars,
and all ye need to know.”