WEBVTT

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Last poem.

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If pressed, I will call this
poem an ecological parable.

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But I'm not so sure it is an
ecological parable, because I

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can't figure out
what the moral of it

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is, if it is indeed
an ecological parable.

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Maybe it's a parable about
always being on a diet.

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I'm not sure.

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It's called "Feeding the Sun."

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There's a sense in which
the sun gives us everything

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that we have.

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It feeds us, if you will.

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And I thought, well, what if we
had to turn around and feed it?

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Pay it back, so to speak,
for everything it's given us.

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"Feeding the Sun."

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"One day we noticed that
the sun needs feeding.

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Immediately, a crash
program begins.

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We fill rockets with wheat,
smoke rings, razor blades,

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then after long aiming--

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they're off.

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Hulls specially
alloyed, so as not

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to melt before the
stuff gets delivered.

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We pour cattle, rivers,
windmills, Aborigines,

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et cetera into the sun
which, however, grows

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stubbornly smaller, paler.

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Finally, of course, we run out
of things to feed the thing,

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start shipping ourselves.

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By now all the planets, moons,
asteroids, and so on have

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been shoveled in, though
they're not doing much good,

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it's still looking pretty weak.

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Heck, nothing helps.

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Now, the last few
of us left lift off.

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Now, the last few
of us left lift off.

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The trip seems forever
but then, touch down.

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Just before entering we
wonder, will we be enough?

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There's a last second
doubt in our minds.

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Can we-- can this final
sacrifice, our it broughten

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crumb, satiate it?

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Will a glutteral belch
burst out then at last.

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And will that big burp
be seen by far off

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telescopes, interpreted as a
nova by those other galaxies,

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those further stars, which
have always seemed even more

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starving than ours."

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Thank you.

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[APPLAUSE]

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Just one thing, if you don't--
you can have those things,

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if you want, but if
you don't want them,

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please return them to me.

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Thanks.

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[APPLAUSE]

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