FEBRUARY TWELFTH BIRTHDAY STATEMENT

That nameless son of a bitch of a critic who
wrote that I only wrote one good poem in
my life might be right so here's to you
future brother and sister and other poets
to drink to me and you with a shot
of bourbon and a bottle of beer
to the success of my intention on
my sixty-fifth birthday and to your
matching accomplishment.  One poem
is enough.  What have you done,
my birthday mates Abraham Lincoln
and Tadeusz-Thaddeus Kosciuszko,
to get a Loncoln Memorial and a Kos-
iosko Street in Brooklyn?  Nothing
but revolutionary activity.  That son
of a bitch of a critic has said it: I have
made one poem, not the Gettysburg Address,
and not the military fortifications at West Point.

ALAN DUGAN