Jack Hirschman, for the New Year 2008

O best worst
O unhappiest happiness
O drunken sobriety
O cleanest addiction
O furriest bark of roughhouse
sensuanimality
O mirror name of God
O roughest ruff
There goes year ʽ07
with its tail between its
anos jahre anno gezuar ane god
It began, a star, and grew to be
sameold
with hopeless hope
war peace, and peace war
most victoriously losing

O broken mend, O last year
kissed and good riddanced

O here, here comes, here comes
Baby Eight

BE
the second letter, which means, first of all,
EXIST

And GINNING
which comes from the Greek for WOMAN

as BEGINNING
and even be ginning in this capitol of hell
on earth
because itʼs New Yearʼs Day and I wish you well
and my father does too
and my mother does three
and though theyʼre both dead
they hear your Happy
New Year
because here where nobody gets out alive,
paradoxically no one and nothing ever dies

so C HOBOM GODOM
the Russian words for “To the New Year”
are an acronym SNG
which I decode as SONG
as existence, as the beginning
of whatʼs new and fresh on earth, child.
You are new and fresh on the earth, child,
you are the new year celebrated the world over,
on this holy day of secularity,
when beginning tastes like it will never end.

O hopeful hope, may it never end.