January: Year-day 31

         
                                          
                                          
January: Year-day 31

The year of the dragon supplants the hare's,
or forty-six seventy-four by 'five.
The one by its wits avoided Time's snares;
the other by meanness will live and thrive.

So I, friendly Westerner, lightly see
what brings those of Chinese culture long joy;
yet honor, knowing a loved mystery,
secular, sacred, gives weight to its voice.

For I in my culture, too, celebrate
one year's dying with another year's birth
in ways happy meetings gently accrued,
unwilling, unable, to explicate
how customs so formed are of special worth
to me and mine who are through them renewed.
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