Cheer.

A merry band went wassailing, out through drifts of winter’s snow.
They left along the hidden path that all wassailers know.
But returning from their wassails to warm by Christmas hearth,
Their merry band had doubled, and was twice those that went forth.

Moved by a curiosity, no doubt born of Christmas cheer,
I hid amongst some bushes when next the wassailers came near.
Through the secret meadows and along the unmarked road,
I stalked the outbound choir, to know where their growth was owed.

From a dark and glutted building, still as a Christmas mouse,
I watched as the wassailers approached a bewreathed house.
Warming to their wassail, a family came to fill the door,
And then the song proceeded. It lives with me forevermore.

The starry night, the fretted neck, along which rang the chorus line.
The notes as clear as crystalled winter, ringing out in frozen time.
A countless thousand harmonies, at once near yet beyond reach,
Involving every ounce of air, robbing Nature of her speech.

Before the gathered wassailers could once repeat their sounding joy,
The attendant family had come and joined the wassailing envoy.
Voices raised in Christmas, they marched together down the street,
And I, I followed after, as if Marley’s ghost compelled my feet.

Through the silvered city, stores would empty to greet the song,
And every one who listened was converted to the throng.
Mulled wine was left to cooling, the turkey abandoned there to rot,
Job posts went untended, and babies were left crying in the cot.

Lovers broken from embraces, surgeons from patients in distress,
Joined in their interrupted finest, or arrived in gross undress.
Even motorists in transit, tumbling abruptly from speeding cars,
Would crawl along after the song, streaking blood across the tar.

Bewitching mind, bedeviling ear – beguiling whosoever chances hear
Its demonic promise of delights, its jolly strains of godless cheer!
A siren song of sallow tinsel, a gift loveless and hollow of all benefit,
Like sulfuric coal inside your stocking, burning the hand to close on it.

Noel! Noel! Natalis lumen, nephel. So cried the Adversary as he fell
Across the void, through silent night, unto the fiery lakes of hell,
Where screams are mocked by tawdry jingling bells,

And holly decks the halls of Mulciber, and crowns accursed Azazel!

Subsuming all the wassail-able, the wassailing army still did not cease,
But will insist on piggy pudding till the whole earth knows their peace.
An incessant, drumming “rum-pum-pum” from a place far and forlorn,
Keeps the shuffling footsteps moving, marching Westward, ever on.

I’ve past the end of my retelling, yet you seem unmoved by the affair.

Perhaps you notice I’ve been wassailing and returned no worse for wear.
You suppose that I’ve escaped somehow, and therefore you can too,
But of course I’ve known and know the song, and now, friend, so do you.

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