1771 c/o Llew Watkins

MDCCLXXI


Calculating that, of the terrible Kali Yuga,
it is the year four thousand eight hundred and seventy three,
Rabindranath decides that this must be why
his wife is refusing to sleep with him.

Eight years after the enthronement of the Empress,
makes it the eighth year of the Meiwa era in Japan.
At the court, Kiyomi is pissed off
because her lover Ritsuki has walked off in her kimono.

The great great great great great great grandfather
of Malaclypse the Younger is getting his boots ready for church.
Discordianism has not yet been invented,
but years hence they will backdate it to 2937.

The Chinese call it the year of the metal rabbit.
Yan is grinning because he has just caught two rabbits.
He will take them back for Shui
and Choyu to eat for their supper.

The Bahá'í's beautiful years take the form
of nineteen months each of nineteen days.
In Persia, 73 years before their calendar has begun,
Babak sleeps fitfully and has a dream about a young prince falling.

Chuks and Ndidi are arguing violently.
Chuks swears that he isn't to blame
for breaking one of Ndidi's pots.
The Igbo calendar makes it 772.

The Julian calendar has slipped
eleven days out of sync.
With sharp quick gestures Augustus is teaching his pupil Cato
about the Ides of March, Brutus and Caesar.

The Coptic calendar,
which keeps perfect time with the Julian calendar,
has it as 1487.
Asim, realising he is bankrupt, sits down by the Ganges and weeps.

The Ethiopian calendar overlaps perfectly
the Coptic calendar, but all of the years and months
have been given different names.
Young Girma, trying to impress a girl, is trying to remember them all.