On the Feast of Holy Solitude.

The temperature was just two degrees

when I woke up on Christmas Mo[u]rn 

I put on my new moccasins (hardly worn)

made in the distant orient (Cathay),

my old but clean green corduroys worn at the knees,

and a clean shirt (only slightly torn)

bought with small money wisely spent,

and went downstairs to breakfast

on delicious cold porridge

made last Saturday 

from bulghur-like pinhead oatmeal,

with fromage-blanc and half a lactase-pill,

and very dark coffee from Rwanda 

in deepest, starkest Africay, 

filched from a supermarket 12 miles away.

*

Oscar Wilde

said shallowly
that Outcasts always mourn.

But the unreviled

Inkept, sometimes profoundly careworn,

don't so frequently rejoice
on the back-side of Paradise.