The Old Year

The old year is gone You say Dead as leaf fallen Under a barren tree Dead And still mulching roots Of new growing Things Dead and still Nurturing continuities A breast in the mouth Of bitter hunger No hand can remove How is a thing gone And yet remain To corrupt everything Every new dream is a fruit Of old ambition Every ambition Has a stalk of pain Nothing dies Until memory is lost And memory Is not the frost In the sun. My order is disheveled Contemplating time The root Of all mortality While I Like an old year past Away And be dead When no one remembers For the ash Without the ember Is dust in the wind The forest Fragile as love again. The old year is gone Dead you say The river flows And never comes back In tears or in rain.