"If Only We Had Taller Been," by the late Ray Bradbury. The intro is charming but the poem begins 2:20 in:
Dan Colman marvels:
In November, 1971, the Mariner 9 space orbiter was about to make history. It was rapidly approaching Mars, making it the first spacecraft to orbit another planet. … Just days before the Mariner 9 reached Mars, two of our greatest sci-fi writers, the dearly departed Ray Bradbury and Arthur C. Clarke, shared the stage with two eminent scientists, Carl Sagan and Bruce Murray, at a symposium held at Caltech. At one point, Bradbury captivated the audience when he read his poem, “If Only We Had Taller Been,” and gave an almost spiritual inflection to the Mariner 9 mission, reminding us of something that Neil deGrasse Tyson once said: the line separating religious epiphany and feelings created by space exploration is awfully, awfully thin.
The Dish 