TRIP TO ELTHAM PALACE POEM 16

Life is marked by milestones, which we usually remember by celebrating them. We might have a cake. We might have a big party. We might go to a restaurant or invite people for a meal. Celebrating with the people you love can be a mixed bag, but I love it, even with the arguments that inevitably come from having not seen each other enough.

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“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.” Charles Dickens

The Feast

Before the arches I stood,

About to attend the yearly feast,

A merriment of extraordinary fare,

For all that cared to care.

Ennumbered as engendered the digits lined

Up to pick up their delight,

Three thousand generations

After the first bite we found ourselves

Supplicant.

What light and sights!

The joy was not surpassed of the first

Feast that was of the rite,

I thought of you and our modern lack of

Sacrifice or charity,

Impersonal in our personality and person,

But closer than a knife edge to the meat.

Tearing through the meat with teeth

Sharpened for the cause,

I realised your spying eye

Still penetrated mine.

A lust as ancient as our form did lie,

And there was not to be a goodbye.

“It struck him that how you spent Christmas was a message to the world about where you were in life, some indication of how deep a hole you had managed to burrow for yourself”. Nick Hornby