New Year's Recipe - Carlos Drummond de Andrade

New Year's Recipe

If you want to have a beautiful New Year

The color of the rainbow or the color of your peace,

A New Year beyond comparing to all the time you've already lived,

(lived badly perhaps or senselessly)

If you want to have a year

Not freshly painted with everything back on the right track,

But new in the feelings of coming to be;

New

Down to the heart of the things you are least aware of

(to begin with what's inside you)

New, spontaneous, you don't find it to be so perfect,

But with it you eat, you walk,

You love, you understand, you work.

You don't need to drink champagne or any other drink,

You don't need to go on visits or receive cards

Do plants receive messages?

Do they send telegrams?

You don't need

To make a list of good resolutions

To file in your bureau drawer.

You don't need to cry with regret

Over foolish things you've already done

Or to half believe

That by the decree of hope

From January onward things will change

And everything will be brightness, reward,

Justice among men and nations

Freedom with the fragrance and taste of morning bread,

Your rights being respected, beginning

With the sacred right to live.

To have a New Year

Which deserves that name

You, my friend, have to deserve it,

You have to make it new, I know that it's not easy,

But try, experiment, be conscious.

It's inside of you that the New Year

Has always been dormant and waiting.

Carlos Drummond de Andrade