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Prologue Look, friend, at this universe With its spiral clusters of stars Flying out all over space Like bedsprings suddenly busting free; And in this galaxy, the sun Fissioning itself away, Surrounded by planets, prominent in their dignity, And bits and pieces running wild; And this middling planet With a lone moon circling round it. Look, friend, through the fog of gases at this world With its skin of earth and rock, water and ice, With various creatures and rooted things; And up from the bulging waistline To this land of concrete towers, Its roads swarming like a hive cut open, Offshore to this island, long and fish-shaped, Its mouth to a metropolis, And in its belly, this village, A gathering of families at a crossways, And in this house, upstairs and through the wide open door Of the front bedroom with a window on the world, Look, friend, at me. 60 ...

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