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This is the poem that got
me in the worst trouble

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in terms of a prophecy.

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I wrote a poem about
multiple births

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about five years
before I had twins.

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So this is the problem's home.

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It started because my daughter
brought me a book of--

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a black and white
book, I remember

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it was, with triplets all
wearing polka-dot dresses.

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And she gave me the
first line of the poem.

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She said, triplets
are so embarrassing.

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And that's where
the poem started.

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And then I had twins
a few years later.

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"Identity Principle."

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"Triplets are so
embarrassing, too

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much soup in the soup of life.

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Who needs an alphabet with
three O's, a tangled birth,

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a troika of woes?

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Picture the mother,
swelled as a cloud,

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the gallop of three heartbeats
like a posse through her.

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Or twins, those clever monkeys,
allowed to eat at table.

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Identical birth marks,
matching hairnets, the sound

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and the echo, and old age.

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One twin wheels the
other before him,

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meeting himself
after the stroke.

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So you decide, even among
brothers and sisters,

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raucous as wedding guests,
to be an only child.

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The stance you take in making
love, and walking crookedly

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in robbing the sperm bank,
until you have a child,

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and people say, she
looks just like you.

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In her face you see the same
wish to be an island so distant,

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she'll never see
another pleasure boat."

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So then twins came along.