For January · 3poems & readings

New Year Poems

Auld lang syne and new beginnings: poems for midnight toasts, January resolutions, and the strange quiet of the first week.

The New Year already has its poem, and most people sing it without knowing whose it is. Burns's 'Auld Lang Syne' is a drinking song about deliberately remembering — "should auld acquaintance be forgot" is a question, and the answer the song keeps giving is no. That is why it works at midnight: it faces backwards at the exact moment everyone else is facing forwards.

For the other mood — the grey, unresolved first week of January — Hardy's 'The Darkling Thrush' is the better poem. Written at the close of the nineteenth century, it puts a worn-out landscape next to a thin old bird singing for no visible reason, and lands on "some blessed Hope, whereof he knew / And I was unaware." It is not a cheerful poem, but it is an honest one, and it is the piece to read when a New Year needs acknowledging rather than celebrating. For toasts, a single stanza of Burns is enough; nobody wants a recital at midnight.