Shall I compare thee? (Covid-19)

Poems in the time of Corona

Shall I compare thee? (Covid-19)
after William Shakespeare (Sonnet 18)
on the (probable) anniversary of his birth and death

Shall I compare thee to the Spanish flu?
Art thou more deadly and more disparate?
Tough minds do chart your likely spread in June,
And isolation's end hath long to wait;
Some said in heat Corona would be gone,
And your rank visage would in summer die,
A miracle, gold crowns burn'd in the sun,
With nature back to normal by and by;
But promise in the season had to fade,
Losing the halt of quarantine at hand;
Now we do shelter longer in the shade,
While contact under six feet's sadly bann'd:
   So long as breath can poison we must see,
   Such sacrifice of freedom sets us free.



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To breathe or not to breathe

Poems in the time of Corona

To breathe or not to breathe
after William Shakespeare

To breathe or not to breathe, there is no question,
though there's Corona in the air to torture
our lungs, our viscus of outrageous fortune,
or defy balms against its novel troubles
and by inhaling end us. To cry – to weep
for all; and in weeping to fear our end,
with heartburn and blood pressure, nature's jokes
our flesh is prone to: 'tis an apparition
of sorts we must control. To cry, to weep;
to weep, perhaps despair – another foe:
for in despair feared death brings death for real,
and so we suffer nightmares beyond sleep
when we need hope – which is our cure
until a vaccine can restore our lives.




Support a poet. Buy a book.
Magnetic Resonance Imaging: lyrics of love and loss
Those Footsteps Behind: around the world in 50 poems