after the pyrotechnics

 

after the pyrotechnics

l am                                                                                                                                                     

after the pyrotechnics shattering the enamelled sky shards of colour and sound the choreographed embers flying the old year going up in flames and cheers resounding the banging of drums has finished the drunks gone to their beds the animals still paralysed with fear

then there is the silence

the darkness embedded with mica

the breath held like a stopped clock

the faith in something new replacing the old

and the weight of what has gone lifted rising

only to fall again softly like rain

like the unsummoned light coming

the healed sky

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