Year by Stanley Moss

PN Review 268, November - December 2022

Year

What are years? In early Chinese waters
there was a monster named Year, she came
to harass womankind and mankind at a fixed date
at the beginning of Spring. Later a wise man
taught people to explode fireworks to scare
the monster away. It became the custom
to explode fireworks on New Year’s Day.
Now there is a frightened monster, nothing like
a dragon that brings good luck to the worthy.
I don’t have words to say what Year looks like.
Yes, Year has eyes of many colours, donkey ears
for music, webbed warrior feet, an anus
for disapproved holidays.
Year holds public property that is not hers.

In short, to the God fearing, Year looks like history,
has several deceiving eyes. Still, for a month’s sake,
Year modestly hides in the forest and in kind waters.
Years are rare. A few of us believe
Year has children. I think there is a continuing.

Born in Winter, there are premature years.
Forest fires are incubators.
There are so many wildfires in California,
Mother Year and Father Year often made love
under sequoias. It’s a long swim for Year
from San Francisco Bay to Shanghai.
Year rests in Hawaii. Twenty summers ago,
Year swam in the Grand Canal to the Biennale,
her tail splashing laughter at the biannual
that had nothing to do with Year.
What did opinionated paintings, painted for beauty
and money, have to do with the monster?
No one painted mortality, eternity for nothing.

A happy few saw Year on Loch Lomond’s bonnie banks.
An Irishman near the Sligo told me in a pub
he saw Year fighting with a minute,
and minute won. Dead drunk, I told him
when I swim in the Hudson River,
backstroke, freestyle, and kicking
with my one good leg, sooner or later
I know Year will devour me. Till then,
I molest Year in Januarys, try to capture her.

Year understands languages. All languages,
including Chinese, have ancient African roots.
There are 46 Aboriginal dialects in Mexico alone.
Year survived the 1520 genocide in Mexico.
Year after year, she is amused
at the toast in Polish, ‘A hundred years’.

Year struggles, aristocratic Time says
‘Year has a Cockney accent.’
The loneliest fisherman in the world,
I try to spearfish an extra Year for me,
as if it were a whale.
There are Years of many colours,
black, white, purple, green Years.
I don’t forget a Year that looked like a sparrow,
flew like an eagle. She flies forever like some
waterbirds, never touching water.
Year is a clean word, a bullet shot
in the temple of the head.
Forever and always are dirty words.
‘Words have no word for words that are not true.’

Year holds open his or her mouth,
fills it with ocean and spits Time in my face.
Year spits salty Kosher wrinkles on my face.
I don’t lie, I write on the way to Truth so you
believe what I say. Year isn’t a metaphor, or
a Bible story. I laugh and say, ‘Leap year is not
an extra day in February, or a leap over
a tennis net of days.’ I don’t want to waste words.

I kiss Year the monster with her many tongues,
I make good use of my tongue that is guilty and innocent.

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Stanley Moss was born in Woodhaven, New York. He was educated at Trinity College and Yale University, and he served in the US Navy during World War II. After the war he worked at Botteghe Oscure and taught English in Rome and Barcelona. His first book of poems, The Wrong Angel, was published in 1966. His next collection, Goddamned Selected Poems, will be published in May 2024.

Moss worked as an editor at New Directions, New American Library, Bookweek, New York Herald Tribune and New American Review. In 1977, he founded Sheep Meadow Press, a non-profit publishing company that publishes poetry and belles lettres. He makes his living as a private art dealer, largely in Spanish and Italian Old Masters. He lives in Clinton Corners, New York.

This poem was featured in PN Review 268, November - December 2022. Subscribe to PN Review magazine at pnreview.co.uk.