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Their remoter distances
(Airless, and what is more
Too cold or hot for you) --
Urania declares
That if your ship arrives
You'll be freeze-dried, or burned
Precipitantly away --
There's inconceivable
Violence ashore.
-- I have a hunch it is,
So far as we're concerned,
Until it comes to us:
We hold it in our heads,
We featherless bipeds.
-- Where it alone begins
Is where the meaning thins:
A horror, truth to tell.
Here's paradise, there's hell:
Oh yes, it's trivial --
Apart from the not-so-small
And inescapable
Fact that it has us all
By the short hairs.