Now We Sing It

You spent your youth

Extracting

And then

We took the loveliest parts of you

Distilled them

Built machines

Won wars

And left military-grade boot-prints on your face

We spat out your name

Acid on our tongues

But now

Now we sing it

While your body decomposes

Through chemical processes

You could have explained better than I

But your chemistry was banned

Your gravitational attraction, illegal

Your math, a game of zeros

And yet your name became

Synonymous with a test of

Humanity

Now we sing it

And all I can think, Alan,

Is how you are forever embedded in my memory circuits

In the same way that life will no longer be distinguishable from silicon

You can't die if you still exist in the neural circuits of others

You can live here with me

And those who remember you

We will still speak your name

We will sing it