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.