This poem I'm not going to tell you anything about--
this is one of the few poems that some of us
write sometimes or maybe all of us write sometimes.
In which, you know exactly what you think--
what you're writing about.
And you write the poem and you publish it
and it is interpreted in a lot of different ways.
And you realize, although classroom teachers
don't like to hear this and I've been one so I know,
you're supposed to find out what the poet was thinking about.
But it's interpreted in a number of ways that, I realized,
could be perfectly valid.
That those things are there that I didn't realize I was doing.
So I don't want to shut off any--
I want to shut off almost none of your ways of interpreting
this poem.
The only one that I can shut off, for you,
is the autobiographical interpretation.
The poem is called, "The Twins" and I am not only not a twin,
I didn't even have a sibling.
So in that sense, that interpretation
is probably not valid.
Anyway, here is "The Twins", take it as you wish.
My sweet-faced, tattle-tale brother was born blind,
but the colors drip in his head.
He paints with his fingers.
All day with his pots and paper he follows me around
wherever I set up my easel, till I pinch his bat ears,
then before he goes he swears he didn't feel anything.
But he knows my feelings, sneaks them out of my skin.
The things he knows!
Leaving me squeezed and sulking, he
pretends he felt them himself and tells everyone.
Nobody ever blames him.
He's terribly talented.
The world, glimpsing itself through him,
will grow sick with self-love it seems.
And under his eyelid lie down, in burning shame,
with its own shadow.
Whereas, on my canvas, it wears its gray and brown
like a fat beaver.
And even as I sweat on my brush, all forms,
at its simple-minded toothy grin, branches, limbs, trunks,
topple in a watery backwash.
When he goes to sleep, he says, the world stays in his head,
like a big spiderweb strung between ear and ear,
buzzing like telephone wires.
And what he has heard all night, next morning
has happened, is true, is there.
Though it always comes back for me, thick, bathed, grateful.
Everything has to be re-imagined, each sunrise, when
I crawl from my black comfort.
But can't make a phone call.
I have to talk to something in front of my eyes.
You'd never know we were close.
When we meet strangers, they poke my round stomach
and pat his long bare legs.
I gush, and he, or that's what it looks like, glares.
Then he stomps on my oils, and we fight like cats and dogs.
But when it rains sometimes, and he feels it, and I hear it,
and he closes my eyes with his fingers to stop my raining.
And one tear falls before everything is quiet,
and his tear is the color of cinnamon on my tongue.
Oh then, we leave together and nobody can find us.
Not even our mother, if she came, could tell us apart.
Only the stars can see, who cluster around us,
my painted person crouched in his painted heart.
See me afterward for the footnote in my interpretation.
[LAUGHTER]
If you want to compare notes.