Rise to the challenge with dignity
Embrace each task with humility
Approach the doubts of the critical
With an attitude, analytical
Perform to your best ability
Modestly; without ceremony
First amongst equals, the first to achieve
First term in office, a change we believe
Given a second term, what irony
No need to change the ‘Change’ policy
38. Regret
Had those hasty words remained
Unsaid
And those broken promises
Been kept
How could we be sure
We’d have no regrets?
In the long term
Things may turn out for the best
Lessons learnt from past mistakes
Inspire
A more disciplined approach
To words and deeds
Pre-empting cause, effect
And consequence
And avoiding
Repetition of regret
In making future plans
We should
Remember the past
And with hindsight
We may
Look back and smile
All those errors
We can
Put down to experience
So that this time
Go the extra mile
As we lay this ghost ‘Regret’
To rest
Exorcise our demons
Start afresh
Walk with confidence
While acknowledging
Credit due to past regrets
For our success
39. Another Day; Another…New Year?
Is it New Year again, already?
It seems like only yesterday
But, then again, perhaps it was
Time flies so fast, it’s hard to say
As one year ends, another New Year
Rides the cycle of repetition
But who can say which is New Year’s Day?
Each culture has its own tradition
Was New Year’s Day the first of the first
As Gregorian calendar states?
Eastern Orthodox Church year begins
The fourteenth (first, by Julian dates)
Back in Old Russia, the fifteenth day
Of the first month was Happy New Year
And one of twelve animals greets us with
‘Kung Xi Fat Choi’; you know I refer
To Chinese New Year; the year of the Ox
Lunar cycle, twenty sixth, just gone
But this could occur, depending on year
Between Jan and Feb twenty one
Then in Japan, twenty seventh of Jan
The tradition has been preserved
Yet in Tibet, New Year is set
Jan thru Mar, when Losar is observed
In case I missed you in January
I’ll repeat it for your benefit
But that isn’t the end of it
On the first of March, in old time Venice
They held their New Year festival
And March sees the Vernal Equinox
Some found this date more logical
Traditional springtime ceremonies
Mark the old year, over and done
Tamil Nadu, thirteenth, fourteenth March
Baha’i – Naw Ruz – day twenty one
Bengali, centrally on day fifteen
In Kashmir, the nineteenth, by the way
Thelemic New Year, moon permitting
On day twenty…give or take a day
Saka is Balinese, Javanese
On March thirty, New Year is beckoned
In Andhra Pradesh, it’s Tulugu
On March, or April the twenty second
To all you modern-day April Fools
An excuse to joke and play
But April the first, was the first of the year
To Assyrians, back in the day
Also in April, the sixth day sees
In UK, the New Tax Year begin
While on the thirteenth, the Sikhs celebrate
And their own New Year is let in
From the thirteenth to the fifteenth day
Treat the New Year with TLC
In Thailand, Laos and Cambodia
April’s three days of festivity
‘Sawasdee Pi Mai’, the greeting in Thai
As Songkhran water battles take place
Get soaking wet…or try to stay dry
If you find you can’t take the pace
New Year in French Republican times
Was the twenty second September
And Diwali repeats annually
November thirty; St Andrew’s Day
Or the Sunday closest to this date
Is Roman Catholic Ecclesiastic
New Year for priests to celebrate
40. Eternal
I wouldn’t want eternal life
A hundred years would do for me
I couldn’t take the stress, the strife
Of living for eternity
Loss of my hair, teeth, faculties
Would make me wish for death’s dark door
I couldn’t cope without all these
An OAP for evermore
I’d try to end it with a knife
Unless I could be shown the proof
That, given with eternal life
The promise of eternal youth
About The Author
Stanski is the kind of guy who doesn’t do things by half measures.
For example, he’s the guy who went to Thailand in 1999, to see in the New Millennium.
He enjoyed it there so much that he decided to stay on for a while.
He didn’t return to the UK until October…
October 2010…!
Stanski began writing in earnest in 2005 while recovering from a motorcycle accident, in the northern city of Chiangmai, in which he sustained serious head injuries.
Find Stanski on Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/stan.ski.9
More examples of verse by Stanski can be found on his Blog, ‘Elephant Small’
Crawling Distance
In Decline
The Night Jasmine
The Fourth Millennium
Hotel 27
A Fetish For Frustration
Elephant Small Vol 1