WEBVTT

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In the book called
Opening the Hand,

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there are a number of poems at
the beginning of the book that

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have to do with families.

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This too had occurred to me
before, some years before.

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But these poems are different
from the earlier ones.

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First, I'll read one
about an aunt of mine,

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a sister of my father's.

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My father, as I said, was
a Presbyterian minister.

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And his mother was a
very convinced Methodist.

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And, in fact, she was worried
about his immortal soul

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because he became a
Presbyterian, this one.

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She'd also-- which
was very peculiar,

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because she always voted
Republican, I believe--

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she'd allowed John L. Lewis to
have some of his first meetings

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in her basement.

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And it was a very
strange background.

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But enough about that.

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This was my father's
elder sister.

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And her name, they called
her always, Bertie.

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It's addressed to her.

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"You don't think
anything that I know of.

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But, as for me,
when I think of you,

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I don't know how many
of you there are.

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And I suppose you thought
there was just the one.

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How many times you
may have been born,

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as my father's other sisters
would say, in your body.

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Nobody is interested in things
like that in the family.

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Somebody wrote down,
though, that you

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was born one time
on April 20, 1874,

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so that my grandmother,
at that occasion, was 13.

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And the hardest thing to
believe in that account,

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as I think of it, is that
she was ever 13 years old,

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the way we grew up to hide
things from each other.

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So she had a little
baby at that age.

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And that was you, Bertie.

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That was one of you.

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Did you know?

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It presents a different
picture of my grandmother

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from the one I
was brought up to.

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That was the you
she had when she

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was 13, which goes a long way
to explain her Puritanism,

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and your gypsy earrings, and
all the withered children who

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came after, and their
scorn of your bright colors

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and your loud heart.

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And maybe even your son, who
was delicate and an artist,

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and painted heads of
Jesus on church walls,

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where they crumbled
and could not be moved,

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and you're having a good
time and dying in Arizona.

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Except that, as everybody
knew, that you was nothing

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but a mistake in the writing.

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And the real Bertie came along
when Grandma was into her 20s

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and she had her firstborn,
a little baby girl,

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which explains nothing.

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Puritanism, earrings,
the children

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who came after, your son the
frail artist, the crumbling

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heads of Jesus, the having a
good time and dying in Arizona,

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that was the you I met one
morning in summer whom nobody

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could explain, for
you was different.

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Inviting all them so
unexpected and not

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heard of for so long, your
own mother, younger brother,

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younger sisters, new
nephew, to breakfast,

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laughing and waving your
hands with all the rings,

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and them not listening.

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Saying they was in a hurry
to drive farther and see

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the family.

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And you going on, telling them
everything there was to eat."

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