New year resolutions are all very well – but you’re taking your old self with you
The IndependentHAPPY NEW YEAR 2025 Happiest wishes hang like festive baubles From every email and text message until way past the fifth, After which, seasonal pleasantries have worn themselves thin, And I can get to the point without ornamentation, Take down the decorations that adorn my doorway and hall, And pack up the Christmas cards, suddenly old, In the sharp of the January cold. They are dateline leftovers As we all jump the river Styx that separates last year from this, Hoping to leave much of what we were before Shrivelling on the other bank, in the light of new resolutions. Only to discover that we have dragged our old selves with us, Unable to separate our parts by the sharp edge of the year’s end Although it divides at midnight, like a cleaver. The post-Christmas funeral of a friend I would dance with At Christmas parties, while others flagged, Ended with the strains of Abba’s “Dancing Queen”, And four days later I heard it again as the New Year Stepped over the exhausted remains of its predecessor, And the conga scuttled past in its trousers and skirts to the “goodbye” Of the Town Crier’s last cry as she retires.