Three Pandemic Poems
By: Mike Douse
About The Poem
I wrote these in mid-2020, the Yeats one after Cheltenham races.
The Poem
Covid-19: after W B Yeats
This is no virus for old men. The young,
As if immune, relax in one another’s
Arms. It is the elderly for whom it lies
In wait – us dying generations – us paltry
Things in tattered coats: jam-packed in
Vast spectator-crowded stands, crammed
Into trains and cars and planes, breathing
Each other’s dwindling gasps, too obsolete,
Too stuck in unhygienic ways, to isolate.
I wash my hands of all of it for I have come
Unto the very epicentre of bacterium.
Covid-19: after Dylan Thomas
I see you wraiths of autumn in your care home.
Befuddled and unvisited, staring at faded
Yesterdays, demented in your chairs.
We are the sons your futures were,
Guilty as charged, the negligent deniers:
O hear the carers coughing as they tend.
Covid-19: after T S Eliot
April is the cruellest month
Between the face mask
And the long-sleeved gown,
Between the visor
And the visage,
Between the disinfectant
And the President,
Between the vaccine
And the vulnerability
Falls the virus.
Between the pangolin
And the pandemic,
Between the aerosols
And the antibodies,
Between the testing
And the tracing,
Between the droplet
And the lockdown
Falls the virus.
Do not resuscitate
Do not resuscitate
Do not resuscitate
This is the way the world ends
Not in my own nice warm bed
But in a ventilator.
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