Yearly, the liminal space between Christmas and New Year offers a time for reflection—for taking stock of the year gone by while preparing for one ahead. In between festive gatherings, it’s a more solitary time, earmarked for the quiet assessment of our current selves, and what we want from life in the year to come.

American poet WS Merwin (1927-2019) captures the essence of this space for self-inventory in his ode ‘To the New Year’. In addressing the New Year directly, Merwin personifies it as a calm, natural presence, so muted its arrival goes unnoticed, yet it manages to meet us exactly at the point ‘where we have come’.

This meeting, between the self and the New Year, Merwin describes as ‘such’—it is whatever we are at the time. One might interpret this ‘suchness’ as a call to self-acceptance, but also as a bright reminder. To this meeting we bring our ‘hopes such as they are’, which cannot be seen or touched—yet…

To the New Year
by WS Merwin

With what stillness at last
you appear in the valley
your first sunlight reaching down
to touch the tips of a few
high leaves that do not stir
as though they had not noticed
and did not know you at all
then the voice of a dove calls
from far away in itself
to the hush of the morning

so this is the sound of you
here and now whether or not
anyone hears it this is
where we have come with our age
our knowledge such as it is
and our hopes such as they are
invisible before us
untouched and still possible