Waking Early New Year's Day, Without a Hangover

Look at the map and tell me where

A conscious mind would not despair.

In Poland? Palestine? Peru?

In Angkor Wat? In Timbuktu?

Twist as you will upon the grid

of North, South, East, and West, amid

Whatever fleshpots Rome may boast,

Or safe at home with buttered toast,

At least it all comes down to this --

The world's too big for bombs to miss,

The law too weak, the door too wide

To forestall every suicide.

While there are motive, means, and time,

There will, as sure as death, be crime.

Our hope must be that those who've got

The right, or guns, to have us shot

Will set a limit to their catch

And feel no need to fire the thatch;

That just as long as power buys

Good opera seats and alibis

The guilty rich will be content

Still to convene their Parliament,

Still to resist the urge to wreak

Some vengeance on their heirs, the meek.

How like the thief's benign reprieve,

Who'd spare our lives and only thieve,

So long as we do not protest

We even may enjoy the jest.

This is the social contract we

In 1986 A.D.

Must live by if we mean to live,

Committing sins we can't forgive

With every coffee bean we grind,

And every heart, and every mind.

(For surely if you've wit to trace

A line of logic through this lace

Of verses, you're among the few

Who're well -- or well-enough -- to-do

And can't too bitterly complain;

For thoughtful minds are free of pain

To the degree that they can think

And alchemize their thoughts to ink.

Happy the man who can declare

His angst with any savoir faire.

More happy still if he repine

Over a five-buck jug of wine.)

How swiftly, ably fear deflects

The squeamish eye away from texts

So dire toward each bright ad's plea

For booze and equanimity.

Internalized that turns the eye

And tunes the slavish tongue to praise

Our meted lengths of rope and days?

Laud we the god, for yet we breathe,

And hang in heaven a smoky wreath

Of thanks for yielding yet a year

More to the time we're sentenced here.

Between the jailer and the jailed

There's no hope lost. The god that failed

To intervene at Buchenwald

Will not decide to be appalled

At infamies that shall be nameless.

That god is dead, and history aimless

Enough of peeling New Year's chimes.

I want my coffee and The Times.

  -- Tom Disch