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New Year

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  • Poem

    New Year's Eve
    December 31, 1975

    By Miguel Algarín
    Richie playing the maracas
    is the universe becoming fluid
    and the Nuyorican Café
    floor becoming platform
    for the shape of art
    to mimic so that the artifact
    becomes direct message
             no symbols of
             but the very thing itself
    the knife in...
  • Poem

    poetry-magazine

    Before the Mirror on New Year’s Eve

    By Philip Metres
    Take this glass, quoting me darkly:
    Cassandra, coalmine canary.

    I want to sing the confusing flesh,
    The confounding joyful leash,

    Flesh that stretches planet-wide
    If a planet were human-sized.

    These pulsing thermal layers we wear,
    Not the myriad places they tear.

    The sweet and acrid cabbage head,
    Its labyrinths...
  • Poem

    New Year's Eve 1989

    By Bill Zavatsky
    Up on the roof, waiting for the fireworks to begin
    in warm winter rain, a moment ago I stepped
    from the elevator into the black air
    of an almost New Year
    and need a minute to catch my breath
    at the spread of city open...
  • Poem

    New Year's Poem

    By Margaret Avison
    The Christmas twigs crispen and needles rattle
    Along the window-ledge.
                 A solitary pearl
    Shed from the necklace spilled at last week’s party
    Lies in the suety, snow-luminous plainness
    Of morning...
  • Poem

    Year’s End

    By Richard Wilbur
    Now winter downs the dying of the year,   
    And night is all a settlement of snow;
    From the soft street the rooms of houses show   
    A gathered light, a shapen atmosphere,   
    Like frozen-over lakes whose ice is thin   
    And still allows some stirring down within.

    I’ve...
  • Poem

    poetry-magazine

    “Your Luck Is About To Change”

    By Susan Elizabeth Howe
    Ominous inscrutable Chinese news
    to get just before Christmas,
    considering my reasonable health,
    marriage spicy as moo-goo-gai-pan,
    career running like a not-too-old Chevrolet.
    Not bad, considering what can go wrong:
    the bony finger of Uncle Sam
    might point out my...
  • Poem

    The birthday of the world

    By Marge Piercy
    On the birthday of the world
    I begin to contemplate
    what I have done and left
    undone, but this year
    not so much rebuilding

    of my perennially damaged
    psyche, shoring up eroding
    friendships, digging out
    stumps of old resentments
    that refuse to rot on their own.

    No, this year I...
  • Poem

    Grayed In

    By Martha Collins
    1

    Snow fallen, another going
    gone, new come in, open
    the door:
                      each night I grow
    young, my friends are well
    again, my life is all
    before me,
                       each morning
    I close a door, another door.


    2

    Cloud on cloud, gray
    on gray, snow fallen

    on snow, tree on tree
    on unleafed...
  • Poem

    Snowfall

    By Ravi Shankar
    Particulate as ash, new year's first snow falls
    upon peaked roofs, car hoods, undulant hills,
    in imitation of motion that moves the way

    static cascades down screens when the cable
    zaps out, persistent & granular with a flicker
    of legibility that dissipates before it can...
  • Poem

    New Year

    By Bei Dao
    Translated By David Hinton
    a child carrying flowers walks toward the new year
    a conductor tattooing darkness
    listens to the shortest pause

    hurry a lion into the cage of music
    hurry stone to masquerade as a recluse
    moving in parallel nights

    who's the visitor? when the days all
    tip from nests...
  • Poem

    January 1919

    By Christopher Middleton
    What if I know, Liebknecht, who shot you dead.
    Tiergarten trees unroll
    staggering shadow, in spite of it all.
    I am among the leaves; the inevitable
    voices
    have nothing left to say, the holed head
    bleeding across a heap of progressive magazines;
    torn from your face,
    trees that...
  • Poem

    1 January 1965

    By Joseph Brodsky
    The Wise Men will unlearn your name.
    Above your head no star will flame.
    One weary sound will be the same—
    the hoarse roar of the gale.
    The shadows fall from your tired eyes
    as your lone bedside candle dies,
    for here the calendar breeds nights
    till...
  • Poem

    Requiem for the New Year

    By Mary Karr
    On this first dark day of the year
          my daddy was born lo
    these eighty-six years ago who now
          has not drawn breath or held
    bodily mass for some ten years and still   
          I have not got used to it.
    My mind can still form to...
  • Poem

    December 31st

    By Richard Hoffman
    All my undone actions wander
    naked across the calendar,
     
    a band of skinny hunter-gatherers,
    blown snow scattered here and there,
     
    stumbling toward a future
    folded in the New Year I secure
     
    with a pushpin: January’s picture
    a painting from the 17th century,
     
    a still life: Skull and mirror,
    spilled...
  • Poem

    on new year’s eve

    By Evie Shockley

           we make midnight a maquette of the year:
    frostlight glinting off snow to solemnize
           the vows we offer to ourselves in near
    silence: the competition shimmerwise
     
           of champagne and chandeliers to attract
    laughter and cheers: the glow from the fireplace
           reflecting the...
  • Poem

    Burning the Old Year

    By Naomi Shihab Nye
    Letters swallow themselves in seconds.   
    Notes friends tied to the doorknob,   
    transparent scarlet paper,
    sizzle like moth wings,
    marry the air.

    So much of any year is flammable,   
    lists of vegetables, partial poems.   
    Orange swirling flame of days,   
    so little is a stone.

    Where there was something and suddenly...
  • Poem

    January, 1795

    By Mary Robinson
    Pavement slipp’ry, people sneezing,
    Lords in ermine, beggars freezing;
    Titled gluttons dainties carving,
    Genius in a garret starving.

    Lofty mansions, warm and spacious;
    Courtiers cringing and voracious;
    Misers scarce the wretched heeding;
    Gallant soldiers fighting, bleeding.

    Wives who...
  • Poem

    January 22nd, Missolonghi

    By Lord Byron (George Gordon)
    'Tis time this heart should be unmoved,
           Since others it hath ceased to move:
    Yet though I cannot be beloved,
                                        Still let me love!

       My days are in the yellow leaf;
           The flowers and fruits of Love...
  • Poem

    To the New Year

    By W. S. Merwin
    With what stillness at last
    you appear in the valley
    your first sunlight reaching down
    to touch the tips of a few
    high leaves that do not stir
    as though they had not noticed
    and did not know you at all
    then the voice of a dove...
  • Poem

    The Darkling Thrush

    By Thomas Hardy
    I leant upon a coppice gate
          When Frost was spectre-grey,
    And Winter's dregs made desolate
          The weakening eye of day.
    The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
          Like strings of broken lyres,
    And all mankind that haunted nigh
          Had sought their household fires.

    The land's sharp features seemed to...
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