if I did say that you were hollow and heartless, I meant it in a positive way

    Farewell, years of the zoth century. Goodbye 

collectively and individually. I will miss you. 

 

    Goodbye 1991, year of the palindrome. There will never 

be another year like you until 2002. 

 

    Oh 1968, you and your friends 1967 & 1969 were a riot. 

 

    I'll never forget you, 1978. You were the year in 

which I first had sex. I bid you farewell in French, the 

language of intercourse: 

    Baisse-moi, prends-moi ici, dans ce poème, 

    sur cette page. Oh, mais tu es si sensuel, 

    année provacant! Au revoir. 

 

    I wish I had known you better: 1904, 1905, 1906. I 

always think of you guys together, sitting at the back of 

the 20th century. I wish we could have hung out!      

     

    1992. The year I graduated from law school. What have 

you been up to? Let's have lunch. 

 

    1955. I wasn't born yet, but don't think for a minute 

I don't lie awake, nostalgic for you. 

 

    I would like to apologize to the 1980s. I never said 

you were hollow and heartless. If I did say that you were 

hollow and heartless, I meant it in a positive way. We only 

hurt the years we love. 

 

[Pam Quinlan, 'Yearbook', from American Poets Say Goodbye to the Twentieth Century, ed. and with an introduction by Andrei Codrescu and Laura Rosenthal]