Gray-feathered birds are nesting in my brain. The flesh is tender but the pain Diminutive, for pain is an opiate For pain. But when the young birds hatch and mate And more claws tear the dwindling skin, The drug will dwindle too, so thin That I'll lie powerless, and long Remain the meaning of their mating-song.
Gray-feathered birds have settled inside the speaker's brain, and the whole poem unfolds from that one disturbing image. It reads as a picture of a mind overtaken by something that grows and multiplies, whether illness, obsession, or a darker inner voice. At first the damage is bearable: the pain is small, and strangely, pain itself dulls the pain, working like an opiate. That odd, circular logic shows a speaker already learning to cope with suffering.
But the poem looks ahead with dread. Once the young birds hatch and mate, more claws will tear at "the dwindling skin," and the numbing effect will thin out. What follows is helplessness. The final lines make the speaker the "meaning" of the birds' mating-song, as if his suffering is simply what their happiness amounts to. The title, "Original Sin," hints at something inherited or unavoidable. The mood is calm on the surface, yet quietly horrifying underneath.