Announcing the inaugural HOTM poem

It being the first day of the new year makes it an excellent time for me to post the first poem I’ve written in a long time (aka schooldays). Poetry, like jazz, is to me something that I quite like trying my hand at, but I simply can’t understand it when it comes from someone else. Says the ultimate egoist.

I was just thinking at ten p.m. last night (when I was on call, by the way), that it must be New Year’s Day already for someone in some other country. The thought stuck and got scrambled with the memories of Terry Pratchett’s Amazing Maurice, which I’d recently read. Hence this poem, which I’ve written in villanelle style. Villawhat? I can’t say it any better than Wiki can.

New Year in Hamelin

 The Old Year will not go away

The piper’s last memento –

Somewhere on earth it’s New Year’s Day

 

Scurrilent scourge, ditchwater grey

Betwixt, between, high and low

The Old Year will not go away

 

The piper took those rats away

The people sang placebo

Somewhere on earth it’s New Year’s Day

 

The cat had no more games to play

Eyes wide shut, he did not know

The Old Year will not go away

 

How nice to never have to say

Where did all the children go?

Somewhere on earth it’s New Year’s Day

 

It’s quiet in the square today

But it wasn’t always so…

The Old Year will not go away

Somewhere on earth it’s New Year’s Day