I am the new year

By: Ayodele Oyadeyi

Silence is taking over, the familiar hush returns;

the drums are becoming dumb, and the dancers are going deaf.
Like a quiet stream in the middle of winter, the hearty chorus, the electrifying pronouncements,
the zeal, the zest, the euphoria that heralded the new year, all slowly fade.
How can silence be so loud? I wonder,
louder than the soul-lifting music of few days ago,
louder than the ecstatic applause that welcomed the new year,
and louder than the inspiring messages of my Bishop who slaughtered all my enemies by fire,
recalled my glory from beneath the sea, removed all evils from the new year,
and assured me of a year most spectacular.
Oh, the tenacity of my resolutions is waning! is this not the year of supernatural double portion?
As I behold a new aurora, the new year seems old,
as old as the year of yester night whose clutch I was so happy to escape;
in order to embrace the new with renewed hope and refreshing newness.
The hope that was burning so hot at the crossover night,
the refreshing newness that was so real I could touch it,
now all seem to have drowned in the ocean of reality.
Reality that, just like the old year, I must sleep in the new year,
that I must open my eyes at the dawn and be on my feet,
that all through I must make decisions and choices,
choices that make me, decisions that make my year truly new.
As it was in the old, so also is it in the new.
The cycle of life, the continuity of time,
finds expression, not in time itself, but in and through me.
I am the expression of time, the reference of life’s cycles
Without me, time is meaningless;
days, weeks and years are empty outside of me.
It is man that marks time, it is not time that marks man.
For if there were no events how could you measure time?
And if there were no me how could there be events?
I am the new year. The old was not 2012. The new is not 2013.
The old is me, the new is me even more.
I make it a new hour, a new day, a new week, a new month, a new year,
And long after the music has stopped, I am still new.
I am the new time, I am the new year.