Covid poem
In the year of Covid
We don’t have the answers yet
The time to take off the lid
And uncover its secretIs yet to come
We need to gain
A special wisdom
We’re too close to the mountain
The wisdom takes time to mature
You need distance
You don’t have the big picture
To learn its consequence
You need a full century
You won’t find its cause
If you’re in a hurry
Reflect, mull and pause
Put conjecture on hold
But the Spanish flu
Can now be told
Cause and effects too
*
Perhaps a full century on
The first world war can be looked at
Cause and effect we can agree on
And what we can learn from that
On one side of the trench
the dirt, the rats the slush,
stood the Brits and the French
on the opp’site, the Boches.
Non-stop the death rattle
cutting youths in their prime_
the aim of every battle
’gainst humanity a crime!
After four painful years
You had to ask the question
Why the sweat the toil the tears
To what purpose the bravery, the gumption
Why so many dead or broken
People might well congrue on
There was no victor we were all beaten
For ’twas the flu that won
*
In a hundred years
People will no doubt ask questions
About Yemeni children’s tears
And Bin Salman’s actions
They will want to know
About the damage to the Amazon
Was Jair Bolsonaro
Guilty of high treason?
Was the Indian genocide
The fault of Modi
Because he had relied
On faith and divinity?
Natanyahu, the Ayatollah, Duterte
Min Aung of Myanmar, Trump
Did they sow the seeds of La muerte
Were they lethal lumps?
Posterity might just shrug
They are dead and gone
But it was the Covid bug
And not they that won
