The Coronavirus is uppermost on people’s minds these days. We are moved to come to terms with the way it’s affecting us by responding in different ways. I felt like writing a poem yesterday and am pleased to share it with you below. It’s called “Corona Virus You Tire Us.” At the same time, I looked to see if there was any other relevant poetry from others that might be meaningful at this time. It’s also my pleasure to share these with you.
CORONA VIRUS YOU TIRE US
You came out of the blue,
Leaving us defenseless, jobless, and infectious.
You’re invisible while masses of us are nervous,
suspicious, sleepless, powerless, in your wake.
There’s a stillness in our streets,
Our Universe crutches while our gloved, masked Protectors,
To walk quietly until the miracle in everything speaks is poetry, whether we write it down or not. ~ Mark Nepo
In a Time of Distance
By Alexander McCall Smith
The unexpected always happens in the way The unexpected has always occurred: While we are doing something else, While we are thinking of altogether Different things – matters that events Then show to be every bit as unimportant As our human concerns so often are; And then, with the unexpected upon us, We look at one another with a sort of surprise; How could things possibly turn out this way When we are so competent, so pleased With the elaborate systems we’ve created – Networks and satellites, intelligent machines, Pills for every eventuality – except this one? And so we turn again to face one another And discover those things We had almost forgotten, But that, mercifully, are still there: Love and friendship, not just for those To whom we are closest, but also for those Whom we do not know and of whom Perhaps we have in the past been frightened; The words brother and sister, powerful still, Are brought out, dusted down, Found to be still capable of expressing What we feel for others, that precise concern; Joined together in adversity We discover things we had put aside: Old board games with obscure rules, Books we had been meaning to read, Letters we had intended to write, Things we had thought we might say But for which we never found the time; And from these discoveries of self, of time, There comes a new realisation That we have been in too much of hurry, That we have misused our fragile world, That we have forgotten the claims of others Who have been left behind; We find that out in our seclusion, In our silence; we commit ourselves afresh, We look for a few bars of song That we used to sing together, A long time ago; we give what we can, We wait, knowing that when this is over A lot of us – not all perhaps – but most, Will be slightly different people, And our world, though diminished, Will be much bigger, its beauty revealed afresh.
Anthony Tao
CORONAVIRUS IN CHINA
Coronavirus in the Neighborhood
We smiled through facemasks,
said hello with our brows,
held open doors
to remind each other
we were still here. Miss Chen the grocer
was gone, back to her hometown.
Old Li the barber was gone,
along with his radio. Zhou the locksmith
only left a phone number, Min absconded
with her cherished regrets, and
the Zhang family, who made flatbread,
never returned: Gone
for the new year, the sign
on their door read.
Those of us still here
nodded knowingly, sidestepped
couriers zipping down our alleys
on our way to Tang’s noodle shop.
The sky is nice, we grunted. The air clean.
We were surrounded by kindness that barely
seemed real. Our throats itched for coal
and tar. Whatever else we craved,
of insurrection or speaking truth
to bureaucracy, whatever small
bonuses we desired for ourselves
or ailments we nursed, of anger
or temperatures, we did it indoors.
We pulled our curtains and waited
until the kettle screeched, then said
exactly what we had always wanted.
II. Coronavirus in the Streets
The viruses had first and last names
until there were too many to count.
We grafted masks onto their faces
and by that point, what did names
matter? We locked them in
boxes, sealed those boxes within
larger boxes built in ten days. But
still they leaked out into the streets,
confused, bumping randomly
into people who could not see.
Watch for them, we whispered,
but to us they all looked
the same. We practiced saying
plague, a fun word, and some of us
wished for it, because why not. Alas,
it was hard to overcome our hardwiring,
animal instinct to survive even
if we knew we were doomed.
We stalked the side alleys with déjà vu
feeling we’d done this before, back
in another lifetime—spying
on neighbors, reporting family,
mantis arms and wheels of history,
misery enforced as baseline.
In a way, we are all the same disease.
To survive humans, you have to give up
humanity—so says the tyrant within.
Our lungs cracked like sheet ice. Breath
whistled through our veins like steam. We searched
for sickness, but there was only sharpness, like guilt.
VI. Coronavirus in the Heart
We stopped saying hello.
We infected with caprice, infected
ones we love with doubt,
those we dislike with conviction;
with memories of the gone,
which is an exacting affliction,
afflicted as we are with the same disease;
with misunderstanding,
avoidable if we weren’t simply ourselves;
with truth blasted out like a sneeze
we’d meant to keep in. We sighed
in bed, patted the outline of body next to us,
soothed by the warm hiss of the shower.
The virus was gone, and in those early days
we filled its vacuum with energy and humor;
then with our sense of what is righteous,
trying to infect others. In our purgatory
we had learned what was meant by
“human condition,” and now
we wondered what was worth celebrating.
A triumph for humanity, the news trumpeted
while we questioned if we deserved it.
We leaned away from bodies, stopped
holding doors. We dragged our feet
on office carpets, poured coffee without smelling.
