by Tara Bell
Along with the prospect of a second lockdown comes the daunting amount of time and slight pressure to fill it with something productive/ worthwhile. Whilst I tend to procrastinate to distract me from my responsibilities, my Nana is filling her time with writing poems, making me feel quite unproductive. The latest one she sent me is inspired by Yeats’ The Second Coming, based on Boris’ second lockdown announcement and the feeling of doom it engenders.
The Second Coming (apologies to W B Yeats)
Is this Yeats’ new
widening gyre?
His great beast,
re-scenting Covid,
stirs from its lair.
It pads faster;
the spreading, seeping
shadow blurs our
known world.
Covid images
float unthreatening
on the screen. But
those spiky circles,
are not toys.
They herald infection,
where hospital trolleys
carry too many
sheeted dead.
We will not succumb as
lockdown shuts down
damps down, stamps down
our resistant death-twitch.
Those ordained gyres
will surely re-form and
our battered species
will doggedly build
a
new survival.
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