Robert Pinsky

Thank you Mr. Kolibas and Mr. Florkewicz 
My old antagonists thank you Joe Cittadino fellow
Citizen in the Bad Class Thank you Principal Wood
For your stony lack of mercy thank you wandering
 
Mind that Mr. Kolibas and Mr.Florkewicz could sense
Was an enemy not to receive a passing grade now
I am a grateful elder letting my mind pass from plea
To pleading as it wanders the past Mr. Florkewicz
 
Probably dead when you excluded me from those afternoon
Student faculty volleyball matches you said It Is Not  His
Religion and that was the truth or let it pass for the truth
Because you graded me correctly as likely to become
 
Errant, wandering mind acceptable enough now against 
The gradient of tedium thank you Mr. Kolibas your F your
Fucknig F let me pass into the undignified Bad Class where Joe
And the other citizens of the Errant Republic and I
 
Passed into a world of imagination and daydreaming defiance
Thank you on that principle which for forty years now of 
Wandering away from the desert of deserving and undeserving 
Has somehow Mr. Kolibas and Mr. Florkewicz earned me
 
Passage into this world of imagination where at a machine 
None of us could have imagined I earn my bread and recall
Your names doubtless dead now thank you for their syllables,
Forked, Cold, Wet, Vicious, Evident, Local, Unforgotten Thank You.

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