WEBVTT

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Bienvenidos todos.

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Thank you all for
coming tonight.

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It's such an honor to
be reading with Ofelia

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and Sherwin and Natalia,
who's out there somewhere.

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But there are so many friends
in the audience tonight,

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so many friends and students.

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But I especially want to
acknowledge the Sheltons, Dick

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and Lois.

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Dick was my teacher
many years ago,

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who introduced me
to many things,

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but surrealism in particular.

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I'm not going to read
anything surreal tonight.

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I want to thank Gail
and Renee and Wendy.

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And I especially want
to thank Karla Elling

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for the wonderful book
that she produced,

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that is a testament to
some of this great language

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that we're in the middle
of, this great desert

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ocean of words that
I'm happy to swim in.

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I'm going to start
by reading something

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that has to do with the
border, that was not

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one of the assigned poems.

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But it's something I
wrote at the behest

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of then-governor
Janet Napolitano,

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in honor of the visit of
then-president Vicente

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Fox of Mexico.

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And I got to read this with
him standing next to me.

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I wish he'd listened.

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This poem is called
"Borderlines."

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"Líneas Fronterizas."

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And it begins with an epigraph.

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"A weight carried by two
weighs only half as much."

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"Un peso cargado por dos no pesa más que la mitad."


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"The world on a map
looks like the drawing

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of a cow in a butcher shop,
all those lines showing

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where to cut.

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El mundo en un mapa parece el dibujo de una vaca en la carnicería, 
todas esas líneas mostrando dónde cortar.

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Pero ese dibujo de la vaca es también un rompecabezas, 
mostrando cómo todas las piezas extrañas caben muy bien juntas.

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But that drawing of the cow
is also a jigsaw puzzle,

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showing just as much how very
well all the strange parts fit

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together.

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La manera en que miramos el dibujo nos hace ver la diferencia.

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The way in which
we hold the drawing

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makes all the difference.

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Parecemos vivir en un mundo de mapas:

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pero en verdad vivimos en un mundo hecho no de papel ni de tinta 
sino de gente.

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Esas líneas son nuestras vidas.

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We seem to live in
a world of maps.

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But, in truth, we live in a
world made not of paper and ink

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but of people.

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Those lines are our lives.

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Juntos, demos vuelta al mapa hasta que veamos claramente:

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La frontera es lo que nos une, no lo que nos separa.

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Together let us turn
the map until we

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see clearly the border
is what joins us,

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not what separates us.

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If he had listened.

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[APPLAUSE]

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