WEBVTT

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Last Neruda that I'll read is
my favorite one in the book.

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And it's written
during the space race.

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And Neruda spend some
time meeting cosmonauts.

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In fact he's got a crush
on the cosmonaut, Valentina

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Tereshkova.

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[LAUGHTER]

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He's got a crush on everybody.

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But so this is
sort of the really,

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he's writing at the first
imagination of humans

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being in space.

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"Those two solitary men,
those first men, up there.

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What of ours did
they bring with them?

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What from us, the men of Earth?

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It occurs to me that the
light was fresh then.

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That an unwinking
star journeyed along,

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cutting short and
linking distances.

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Their faces unused to the
awesome desolation in space.

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Among astral bodies,
polished and glistening,

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like grass at dawn, something
new came from the Earth.

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Wings or bull bone coldness,
enormous drops of water

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were surprised thoughts--
a strange bird throbbing

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to the distant human heart.

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And not only that,
but cities, smoke,

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the roar of crowds,
bells and violins, the

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feet of children leaving
school-- all of that

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is alive in space
now, from now on.

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Because the astronauts
didn't go by themselves.

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They brought our Earth--

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the odors of moss
and forest, love,

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the crisscrossed limbs
of men and women,

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terrestrial rains
over the prairies.

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Something floated up
like a wedding dress

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behind the two spaceships.

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It was our spring
on earth, blooming

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for the first time, that
conquered an inanimate heaven,

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depositing, in those altitudes,
the seed of our kind."

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And I think that's
about 40 minutes.

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Thank you.

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[APPLAUSE]