New Year’s Eve by Lucien Stryk

Seeking no oracles
on mountain tops,
the vagrant shambles
through rough-tumble

of the revelers.
Dodger of gutters, he
plies an art absurd
and desolate. His

quirky lamentation
divides me from myself,
chills the mind to
brittle-heel me by.

Yet dickering with
conscience, trapped
in his shifty eyes, I
hold out my last coin,

snatched with a grimace
of an augur. Sends
me reeling from the
black hole of a year.

From: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse/181/2#!/20605964

Date: 2002

By: Lucien Stryk (1924-2013)