Lifestyle Features

To winter

Lines upon the death of the year

By JAMES PARKER | December 16, 2008

Lines upon the death of the year

Disreputable old man of the streets,
whose blackouts have corrupted all the clocks,
now is the heyday of your impropriety.
These hissing slums of ice about our feet
are yours — where wobblingly, in dampened socks,
we tread like drunks, though harrowed by sobriety.

Imagination shrinks. Who will remember
high autumn, in low-ceilinged mid December?
I curse this early dose of your abuse. It’s
winter already? Damn it, Massachusetts!

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ARTICLES BY JAMES PARKER

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