A New Year

It’s a New Year

The bombs

Bursting in air

Sort

That send scurrying

Into

The pillows

 Terrified cats and dogs,

Who, unlike we, who

Symbolize terror as pleasure

Celebrate

Our cleared tabula rosa

Of sins

In renewal, In new beginnings, In a fresh start,

As if karma

And

The past

Were someone else’s misfortune.

The ghosts of the Spectacle

Do not haunt the innocent

But,

Taunt the weary,

So weary

So very weary.

The bone deep kind

The old life signs

Of

Sighs and whispers

That fill extinction with

Small delights,

Moments of joy,

So precious because

These we know are the last delights

And

Because the future is so near

And

What was dear

Is

Extinguished

In our personal singularity of time.

Oh,

It’s not despair

This air of grief,

Nor,

A histrionic melody

Played

On a tiny violin,

Because,

The tired of life

Makes precious

Every moment of that

Accelerating arc to extinction.