Covid’s Metamorphoses

I

Put not your trust in Princes, sociopaths,

and populists! Yup: R is on the up.

We mutter in our coffee cups

or scream “just do the math”

but there’s the rub: they modelled, did their sums;

convened their focus groups

(which feast on spin, and tonics for the troops,

and marching bands, and martial pipes and drums).

“Mere numbers are for crunching! Common sense

– the good old British type –

will see us through”, they blustered (but events

proved otherwise). Such hubris, humbug, hype,

hypocrisy, and cant! Their “fingers crossed”!

Their calculated cynicism glossed!

II

Down Brixton Hill the rain is falling fierce

and fearsome past the prison gates:

a sudden spate

to wash away the layers of grime, the smears

of soot and diesel fumes. No music spills

from the Electric. Empty stand the chairs

in Windrush Square;

forlorn, the shuttered shopfronts. Covid kills

communities discreetly, by degrees,

with segregation, racism and stealth;

a zoonotic freeze

on breath and health.

We tread a bleak and dread-filled path

Between the shadow and its aftermath.

III

Obscured beneath the moral permafrost

of mankind’s ceaseless, cruel,

destructive search for lebensraum, which fuels

environmental holocaust,

a vision forms, in some cool limpid pool

of keener consciousness:

how more might be achieved with less.

We mined, drilled (fracked!) for carbon molecules;

as Ahab scourged the oceans of the world,

as Icarus caressed the Aegean skies,

we hurtled, wings outstretched, and sails unfurled;

chased down electric avenues. All lies!

Together we’ll rewild the biosphere

and weather these coronavirus years.

 

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