Sinister: a little holiday greeting

[Thessaly1 at xxx.com]

hello.  i just read this poem and i thought i would share it with you all in
this holiday season. :)  it is by the fantasy writer Neil Gaiman.

Nicholas Was...

older than sin, and his beard could grow no whiter.  He wanted to die.
	The dwarfish natives of the Artic caverns did not speak his language,
but conversed in their own, twittering tongue, conducted incomprehensible
rituals, when they were not actually working in the factories.
	Once every year they forced him, sobbing and protesting, into Endless Night.
During the journey he would stand near every child in the world,
leave one of the dwarves' invisible gifts by its bedside.  The children slept 
frozen into time.
	He envied Prometheus and Loki, Sisyphus and Judas.  His punishment
was harsher.
	Ho.
	Ho.
	Ho.
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