I thank my thirtieth star I kicked like a
donkey at the fatty Montag youth
who's all mouth, hair & delicate grin,
and chippy school play s/he's always in:
the years of which the first began with
and continued down to the second
and a sort of third of a Life dissolved
in pits and thunderbolts! noxious stairs
with the tykes battering down glass--
they who full flower go into my classroom
believing my lone Self so help me or else!
More than clown but less than Toparch:
I dared each one, up and down, here,
I'd say, I-I did til the next terror came
and I'd expel, say, boys with the girls--
At these times I also boasted a myriad
smiles til a release, from sameness, just at
my thirtieth: I the Pius and coach, who
wiped filth off their noxious stairs
(2013)
