Welcome back to the Daily Poem here in the Close Reeds Podcast Network. I'm David Kern.

Today is December 31st, New Year's Eve, and we are a day away from 2019.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and enjoyed the Christmas-themed poems that we brought to you last week,

and thanks to Andrew Kern, to my dad, for filling in for me on Friday with his reading of the gift of the magi.

We will be bringing you a couple more Christmas-themed poems up through the 12 days of Christmas.

But today and tomorrow, I've got a couple of New Year's themed poems for you.

The poem I'm going to read today is by W.H. Outen, who lived from 1907 to 1973.

You've heard from him a time or two on this podcast.

The poem is called For the Time Being, or rather it's from a poem called For the Time

Being.

For the Time Being is actually quite a long poem.

This is just a selection from For the time being that is related to the end of Christmas in the beginning of a new year.

Interestingly, Outen wrote this poem to be set to music by Benjamin Britton, which I did not

know until I was looking up some things for this podcast. That's very interesting.

But the poem is a series of dramatic monologues spoken by the characters in the Christmas story and by choruses and a narrator.

And he made all the characters speaking sort of a modern fashion, a modern way of speaking.

So here is the selection that has to do with the new year, I believe.

Well, so that is that.

Now we must dismantle the tree, putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes.

Some have got broken, and carrying them up to the attic.

The holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt, and the children got ready for school.

There are enough leftovers to do warmed up for the rest of the week.

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