WEBVTT

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This poem is called
"After the moonwalk."

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And it was a poem that I
wrote over a number of years

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since the first time
men landed on the moon.

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"When they landed on the
moon what we really wanted

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was for strange
creatures to seize them.

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[LAUGHTER]

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[APPLAUSE]

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We wanted them to
take off their helmets

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and discover they could
breathe, that science was wrong

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and there was air there.

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We wanted people to
be there, tiny people

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who got that way because they
failed to develop usefully

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and finally were banished
into a universe of rejected

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experiments, and insects,
perhaps the giant ancestors

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of our own ants and bees.

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When they took the
first step on the moon

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we wanted green insect men
with mandibles and pincers

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to rush out and
right on television

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drag them off to
glass-enclosed cities

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or to underground
factories and mines

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where a humanoid
race toils that once

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ruled the moon but
invented nuclear weapons

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and destroyed it and are
now the slaves of giant ants

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who took over.

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And an appeal for funds to
build a fleet of airships

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to attack the moon and rescue
our astronauts in captivity.

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Instead what happened
was more like the way

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we once came to this
continent seeing

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nothing of value in the
lives of the people here

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and ruin them and their world,
like a renegade cell invading

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another, though I want to
believe the cancer cell obeys

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laws even if they are still
beyond our understanding.

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Our earth probe succeeded in
breaking through the moon's

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defenses destroying
forever what it was,

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but opening a path for
settlers, colonies of infection,

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the beginning of life.

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And if it is not yet a
living world in our sense--

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though what in the universe
is dead, it is all alive--

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we have sent the germ
cells of our system

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to start multiplying there.

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Even now our seeds are growing
and atmosphere like ours.

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If the moon was an egg
and the astronauts sperm

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germs burrowing
in and if we chose

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them right for the task, which
I doubt, all white and macho

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as they are with those
degenerate vibrations,

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even so it may be the
beginning of a new planet.

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And when it is ready
to be on its own,

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to search for its own orbit,
what great wrenching away

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is ahead for it and
us, and dislocations

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of the stars, tidal waves,
and firestorms on Earth

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repeating the
destruction of continents

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when the moon was born like
a baby from our oceans?

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What was begun-- and
it began long ago,

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the necessity for a moon--

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must continue to the end,
everything always does.

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And will go on sitting as
long as we can glued to our TV

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sets watching it all."

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