<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div dir="auto" style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class="">Passing Through</div><div class=""><span style="font-size: 14px;" class=""><i class="">- on my seventy-ninth birthday</i></span></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Nobody in the widow’s household </div><div class="">ever celebrated anniversaries. </div><div class="">In the secrecy of my room</div><div class="">I would not admit I cared</div><div class="">that my friends were given parties. </div><div class="">Before I left town for school</div><div class="">my birthday went up in smoke </div><div class="">in a fire at City Hall that gutted </div><div class="">the Department of Vital Statistics. </div><div class="">If it weren’t for a census report </div><div class="">of a five-year-old White Male </div><div class="">sharing my mother’s address</div><div class="">at the Green Street tenement in Worcester </div><div class="">I’d have no documentary proof </div><div class="">that I exist. You are the first, </div><div class="">my dear, to bully me</div><div class="">into these festive occasions.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Sometimes, you say, I wear</div><div class="">an abstracted look that drives you </div><div class="">up the wall, as though it signified </div><div class="">distress or disaffection.</div><div class="">Don’t take it so to heart.</div><div class="">Maybe I enjoy not-being as much </div><div class="">as being who I am. Maybe</div><div class="">it’s time for me to practice</div><div class="">growing old. The way I look</div><div class="">at it, I’m passing through a phase: </div><div class="">gradually I’m changing to a word. </div><div class="">Whatever you choose to claim </div><div class="">of me is always yours;</div><div class="">nothing is truly mine</div><div class="">except my name. I only</div><div class="">borrowed this dust.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>- Stanley Kunitz</div></div></body></html>