New Year On Dartmoor

This is newness : every little tawdry

Obstacle glass-wrapped and peculiar,

Glinting and clinking in a saint's falsetto. Only you

Don't know what to make of the sudden slippiness,

The blind, white, awful, inaccessible slant.

There's no getting up it by the words you know.

No getting up by elephant or wheel or shoe.

We have only come to look. You are too new

To want the world in a glass hat.