Year of the Rat: a New Year poem for 2020

2020

This New Year’s Eve

brings an acuity of vision,

sharp as a bat’s echo:

the birth of a decade that

might likely see me crowned dead;

the simplicity of staring ahead

into the future,

with its simple lines,

its constructed disambiguation,

its sudden benign presence,

watching the past metastasized.

Is that the clarity I dread?

Some unstained happiness

shaken out and hung on the line,

a flailing dance in the breeze

of unhindered revision -

the words to a song

that spoke of sap

rising in a tree,

that speaks with the rasp

of leaves uncurling,

of the crisp dry leaves underfoot,

the unfurling of the hand

from around the throat?

And yet,

a last intake of breath

for a leave-taking

that no longer speaks

in wheezy Chinese whispers

but with the bitter-sweet tang

of longing and laughter,

a carousel, a carousal, a recital
of drunken midnight-death happiness

from the drunk and disorderly bards

wrestling with the squared circle,
for all joys want eternity;

not without a bang,

this New Year's song was sung. 

Listen to Zhou Long here