I'm going to be reading from a book that's coming out
in the spring, the title of which will be "Flood"
and begin by reading a poem which
is one of my comparatively rare autobiographical poems.
It dictates an early moral--
it comes from-- dictated by an early moral crisis in my life.
When I was 11, I fell in love with twins.
[LAUGHTER]
The poem is called "Twins."
It bears an epigraph from Marianne Moore,
who wrote, "One may be a blameless Bachelor
and it is but a step to Congreve."
"Twins."
"When I was 11 and they were 22--
[LAUGHTER]
I fell in love with twins.
That's how I thought of them in some five run on syllables--
Connie and Bonnie.
They were so resolutely given as a pair, like father and mother.
I never thought to prefer one.
Warm in her matching bed like half an English muffin
in a toaster.
Bonnie was blond, lithe, wild eyed, angular, and fey.
And Connie was brunette, shiny eyed, and shy, as most true
flirts describe themselves over and over.
[LAUGHTER]
And shouldn't love be an exclusive passion?
To fall in love with twins made me unfaithful in advance.
It made me paralyzed, or I made it.
My love doubled forever into mathematical heaven paralysis.
Frocks rhyme and names confuse, and the world
is thicker with sad futures than lost pasts.
And I, who hoarded names like marbles--
how could I say what I knew?
Indeed, how can I say it now?
I knew the two meanings of cleave.
I looked into those eyes I loved, two brown two blue,
and shut my own gray from any light but mine
and walked straight home and kissed my parents equally
and climbed my growing body's staircase to the very tip
of sleep."
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.
I guess I'm going to ask you if you--
in the event that you should like another poem enough
to applaud it, to hold it to the end
because eventually, there'll be one you won't applaud.
And I'll be driven crazy, wondering
why you didn't like it.