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New Year`s Eve
Posted: 27 December 2004
Word Count: 89
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New Year's Eve
Clocks chime midwinter, giving notice
among fresh kisses and the shaking
of forgotten hands, that death and malice
of the frost surrender to the making
of green treaties by lapsed friends.
The year's senility ends.
Among this company, exchange of giving
drink, fuel and love, suspends
the need for judgment except judging
to be good. Its meaning lies
boundless about us, like the galaxies,
yet human here beside the encircled hearth.
Our handshakes are all drunken ecstasies,
but true for all that, truer than virgin birth.
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Comments by other Members
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 James Graham at 11:05 on 27 December 2004
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This is an antique. I wrote it in the early sixties, and it was published in 1969, in an anthology from the Edinburgh University Press. The spirit of New Year is still with us in Scotland, though the form of the celebration changes. There are certainly not so many lumps of coal around. As I remember it, after seeing the New Year in you went out first-footing, not only to the immediate neighbours as I recall, but all over the town. Sometimes you knew where you wanted to go next, sometimes you just happened on another house where the lights were on. You got back, not at some time on the clock - because time was suspended - but at some hour when daylight was making the street lights redundant. New Year was, and for many of us still is, the more important of the two midwinter festivals. Christmas comes down on us from two high authorities, the Church and the Market; but still, by and large, New Year comes from within ourselves.
My editor in 1999 - a kind of evangelical atheist - wouldn't include this poem in the book, saying 'Truer than virgin birth? Just about anything is truer than virgin birth, so it's a feeble comparison.'
James.
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 roovacrag at 21:16 on 27 December 2004
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James a great piece.
If you haven't changed it since then,was a powerful poem,in those days.
Not one to be accepted. Yet poets and writers did.
Twas the virgin press and red tape that stopped us writing the truth and a way of the future life
of writing.
xxxx Alice
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Tina at 03:05 on 29 December 2004
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I love this - feels like finding a diamond among a handfull of snowflakes - so good to read something well written and thought out. I particularly admire the style you have written in as I find it hard to carry ideas across lines as you have done here. It certainly does not have the feel of something written in the sixties - not trying too hard to convince one of something!! I like what you say also about New Year coming from within ourselves - originality starts here as does realisation of dreams. I so want to have more of my work published in 2005 so I am putting that our now as an intention for the NEw Year.
love the opening verse - especially
{i} death and malice of the frost surrender to the making
of green treaties by lapsed friends.
Just for my head - the death and malice of frost - runs more smoothly.
I like this too as it rings of hope
{i}like a New Year suspends the need for judgment except judging to be good.Its meaning lies boundless about us, like the galaxies,yet human here beside the encircled hearth.
Thank you for this - a delight.
and Happy New Year
Tina
x
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Ticonderoga at 10:44 on 29 December 2004
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I think your editor missed the point! Beautiful poem. My memories of olden times wandering the streets to greet strangers and the New Year are much the same as yours, James. Highly evocative writing.
Best,
Mike
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engldolph at 11:03 on 29 December 2004
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HI James,
Liked this very much. Warm affirmative timeless tone.
A poigniant reminder of the value in greeting strangers and maintaining old contacts, even tenuous ones.
There is still much said in a handshake.
Particularly liked:
death and malice
of the frost surrender to the making
of green treaties
and
The year's senility ends.
See you in 2005
As I cannot shake your drunken hand in person, please accept this e-shake
Mike
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.JPG) Zettel at 12:14 on 03 January 2005
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James
I'm with Ti. If the guy didn't get that what did he get? We have these 2 cheek by jowle (?) celebrations: the one riddled with lies of different kinds to fund an economy, the other as ancient as an idea, if not date, as human beings themselves, gathered together in hope. I know which I prefer.
Like it all: but I think the first stanza is especially fine.
Z
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James Graham at 14:49 on 03 January 2005
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Z, there's no debate on this one - I absolutely agree with you on Xmas (just call it that) and New Year.
My editor also sent back a poem in which the word God occurred, with the note: 'Send religious poems to religious outlets'. The poem wasn't religious at all, atheistic if anything, and he clearly hadn't read it properly but merely noted the 'God' with a capital G. It wasn't a poem I was very happy with anyway, but would rather he had rejected it for literary reasons.
Thanks to everyone else for your comments and New Year wishes.
James.
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