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As most of you know,
Neruda grew up in--

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OK, closing down here--

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grew up in the sticks, and came
to the city at the age of 17,

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to cut his teeth
with the big poets.

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And when he got to Santiago,
there were riots going on.

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There were marches against
the [? nitre ?] barons, who

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had the police on
horseback riding right

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through the masses of
marchers and beating people.

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It was very violent time.

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And that really marked
his trajectory as a poet.

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That was what he
first encountered,

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coming to be a big
poet in the big city.

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So this is a poem
that he writes, later,

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remembering that.

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"I rolled beneath hooves.

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The horses passed
over me like cyclones.

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The moment clutched its flags.

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And riding the student
fervor, it blew into Chile.

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Sand and blood from
nitre quarries,

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coal from backbreaking
mines, copper extracted

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into the snow with our blood.

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And so the map was changing.

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The pastoral nation
bristled into a forest

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of fists and horses.

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And before I turned
20, I received,

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amid the blows of
police cudgels,

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the throbbing of a vast
subterranean heart.

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And in safeguarding
others, I understood

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their lives were my own.

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And I came by friends who
will defend me to the last,

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because my poetry,
barely even shucked,

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received the honor
of their agonies."

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