New Year
By Sikiladi

May the year that we welcome
Be full of abundance and love darts
May the joys multiply by hundreds
And Good health further by thousands

May it bring you laughter and cheers
Leaving no gloom & no room left for tears
May your jaws never tire of jeers
And life becomes free from all fears

May each one’s thoughts be pious & pure
Truth and honesty carry charm allure
Divided and dissolved be all things impure
All negative traits turn to be obscure

May love and compassion rule the world
And all animosity gets forever blurred
May intolerance shed its dark feathers
And tolerant be the entire human clan

May the New Year bring loads of blessings
And anger and despair get the thrashings

May we all believe in truthful confessing
Draping our souls with honesty dressings

May the Year bring success & progress
The human race moves ahead without a stress
May we all learn to live without vengeance
Forgetting failures & forgiving faults without a fuss

Published in The Asian weekly, Edition 643 (30th Dec ’22 – 5th Jan ’23)