^{—on my seventy-ninth birthday}

Nobody in the widow’s household
ever celebrated anniversaries. 
In the secrecy of my room 
I would not admit I cared 
that my friends were given parties. 
Before I left town for school 
my birthday went up in smoke 
in a fire at City Hall that gutted 
the Department of Vital Statistics. 
If it weren’t for a census report 
of a five-year-old White Male 
sharing my mother’s address 
at the Green Street tenement in Worcester 
I’d have no documentary proof 
that I exist. You are the first, 
my dear, to bully me 
into these festive occasions.

Sometimes, you say, I wear 
an abstracted look that drives you 
up the wall, as though it signified 
distress or disaffection. 
Don’t take it so to heart. 
Maybe I enjoy not-being as much 
as being who I am. Maybe 
it’s time for me to practice 
growing old. The way I look 
at it, I’m passing through a phase: 
gradually I’m changing to a word. 
Whatever you choose to claim 
of me is always yours; 
nothing is truly mine 
except my name. I only 
borrowed this dust.