I read that in this famous person’ s poems “she searches
for signs of what lies beneath and beyond the self.”
Which seemed to me pointless, as if you wouldn’ t know
whether to paint with egg tempera or eat it. At eighteen,
I came across Tolstoy’ s “What is Art?” where he said
an artist is different from other people because instead
of eating an apple he paints it. Even then I thought why
can’ t he paint it and then eat it, the way at eight, the war
just over, I stood shoeless in line in the snowy playground
where one of the kids was handing out something that turned out
to be small pieces of orange peel, something exotic we’ d never
seen before which I smelled, nibbled, and finally ate for this poem.