by Erik Kennedy

In ancient Rome at Saturnalia

people gave each other gifts

of oil flasks made of rhinoceros horn,

parchment, amethyst-coloured wools,

dice boxes, snow-strainers.

Servants were served by their masters.

All in all, an okay December.

And now you probably expect me to say

it’s worse today—disaster capitalism

for self-created disasters,

every shopfront a cathedral of tat,

the Three Wise Men on swegways.

And it is worse, in a way, and we don’t even have

the decency to be sombre

in our reality’s gaudy, shitty presence.

That would require the self-consciousness

I wish for every year.

But the endpoint of misery isn’t the present,

and the past isn’t a syllabus of hope,

that’s not what I’m saying. The subject of this carol,

this tendentious cantata, this slightly grim rhetorical samba,

is a respect for our ideas of perfection.

Honour our boozy, once-yearly,

almost sincerely-held conversations

about equality and peace

by twining your commitments into a mutually-supporting circle

in the form of a wreath

that unexpectedly stays green almost until summer.

About the Author:

Erik Kennedy is the poet behind books like There’s No Place Like the Internet in Springtime and Twenty-Six Factitions. His website is erikkennedy.com.

Cover image from The King Drinks, David Teniers the Younger, 1634-40.