WEBVTT

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I think I'll read this
first short trip to Europe,

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which is a trip to
Palermo before I take you

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on the trip to Prague.

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The Charting.

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Flying to Palermo, I watched the
dotted red line plot our course

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over the Océano Atlántico, the
Monti Appalachi at our backs.

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Blanks in the line filling
in as we leave the continent,

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and climb into the evening
that has already left

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Milano, but not yet
arrived in New York.

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Suspended like an
instar over Newfoundland

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and framing her face.

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What time is it here 35,000
feet over the world, hours

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after the toasts have
been raised in Paris--

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sorry hours after the toasts
have been raised in Paris.

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Hours before they will
reach San Francisco.

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The turning world, always
waiting for something,

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always getting over
something, the same things

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all over the globe.

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Baby, at last asleep.

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Daddy's shirt tails untucked.

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My seatmate collapsed over 2
seats, blanket over her head.

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What was that pill she popped
as we taxied out of Kennedy,

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sleep.

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Broken by silent
fragments of a film

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turning, aching,
synthetic diurnal rhythm

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of mechanized flight.

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I'm a day late because a
blizzard hit New England.

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Snow starting at dawn,
and closing the woods

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around my mother's house.

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I shoveled the
pathway, hauled wood,

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and watched the white unfurling.

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Four inches at breakfast,
10 inches at lunch,

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mid-afternoon, and
the whiteness had

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muffled the world down
to the small circle

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at the end of my pen.

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Two storms converging
off the coast,

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spinning together into a galaxy.

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Its force canceling
everyone's business.

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Beautiful, to be subdued by
its quiet, where I could only

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think about flying to
Palermo, and wonder

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what my mother at 90, not
a woman who welcomes help,

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would do alone in a blizzard.

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One day, she said, when the
dog brought home a rotted deer

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carcass, she whacked the meat
and bones apart with a hammer,

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bagged the remains and
drove them to the dump.

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I can feel her frustration
and her strength,

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bemoaning the dog's
disgusting habit,

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but energized by the task.

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And if someone had
come along to help her,

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all she'd have had-- all she'd
have felt is frustration.

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That's why she'd rather
let the snow pile deep

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against the door,
while I fly off to--

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it doesn't really
matter where I've gone.

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Palermo, now.

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Where boats are out at dawn,
past marly cliffs and return

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filling crates that line the
sidewalk, glittering anchovies,

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spiraling periwinkles
black, bursting sea urchins,

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half moon steaks of swordfish
and whole octopus flesh,

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white as porcelain,
speckled purple as wine,

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lifted from the open air pot,
and sliced before my eyes.

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Oh, the beauty of
the customer who

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stands at the streetside bar
to wait, the winter street

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spilling conversation
like heat from open doors.

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I'm here because 200
years ago, the monk

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Piazzi discovered the
first known asteroid

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and named it Ceres.

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His portrait honors the Muse
Urania, science owning up then

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to its sisterhood with art.

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In his observatory, the globe
shows North America in sepia

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unnamed.

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Indian territory
and uncharted land.

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I'm here because now the
charting continues in space.

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How many gravity assists does
it take to fly past the moon?

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And an audience has
gathered to hear what poetry

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has to say about where we are.

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An expert reports
that astronomers

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consider asteroids vermin.

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They clutter space
between Mars and Jupiter,

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streaking the clarity of stars.

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But really, the expert adds, we
should consider them friends,

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places we can use for
staging, land there

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and mine them when
we go to Mars.

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Not my job to put spin
on asteroid reputations.

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Though they can
use it, since one

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slammed to Earth,
leaving an iridium spike

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at the K-T boundary.

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Global darkness for a year,
and the shrinkage of dinosaurs

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into birds.

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My job, to argue
for beauty not use.

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See Galileo's
washes of the moon.

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See Kepler's somnium.

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See Nabokov: I discovered in
nature, the non-utilitarian

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delights that I sought in art.

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My job, to argue for dark skies
that make us see stars and say

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where oh, night did I come from?

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And where-- coded for long
distance-- am I going?

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My job, to be the lepton
thoroughfare that is me,

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and the storm, and the stars,
and the dark matter that

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perforates everything
with its missingness.

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How to feel whole,
knowing you're

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shot through with holes made
of the inverse of all we know.

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Inherent in matter is something
unwounded by puncturing.

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