Poem for My Twentieth Birthday
By Kenneth Koch
Passing the American graveyard, for my birthday
the crosses stuttering, white on tropical green,
the years’ quick focus of faces I do not remember . . .
The palm trees stalking like deliberate giants
for my birthday, and all the hot adolescent memories
seen through a screen of water . . .
For my birthday thrust into the adult and actual:
expected to perform the action, not to ponder
the reality beyond the fact,
the man standing upright in the dream.
Copyright Credit: Kenneth Koch, “Poem for My Twentieth Birthday” from Poetry 67 (November 1945). Used by permission of the Estate of Kenneth Koch.
Source: Poetry (November 1945)