no presents, no cards, no visitors.
While peppers (abandoned by a market-stall)
roast on the red-hot oak-logs,
and we download Ibsen's Ghosts from the BBC,
and we consume a simple, meatless meal,
including a deep and crisp and humble crumble,
we listen to Beethoven's "Waldstein" sonata
played by Pletnev, and Schnittke's Third Quartet,
and, between the two, with glasses raised
discuss the insubstantial nature of "social capital".
Being anti-natalist anti-capitalists
we are wonderfully free of family
and marvellously rich in anti-social capital.
The self-satisfied above was composèd just before
a knocking sounded on our door -
and lo! our incomprehensible and gaily-dressed Basque gypsy mumbling marijuana-growing friend
(currently serving a suspended sentence which he received
for driving yet again without a licence or insurance)
came in (with his sweet old dog) - to ask if they could share
our no more than usually sacred meal on Christmas Eve.
He brought a bottle, a baguette and a tin of cassoulet -
ach! with large chunks of duck in it!
and started rolling a joint. We revised our plan a little,
replacing Beethoven with Mazzy Star, Ron Wood, Jerry Garcia and Tom Waits.
(This proved so appropriate that the 80-minute compilation was played twice.)
The spinach and tomato soup, the big mixed green salad and the humble crumble
were consumed, as originally planned,
and, the atmosphere being inevitably mellow*,
two of us reflected upon social and anti-social capital
while we smiled benignly upon our younger fellow.
* (this word comes from French moëlleux, which originally referred to the softness of bone-marrow.
I have invented the word noëlleux, which celebrates the French language without having too clear a meaning...)
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