The cuckoo's gone

Teasing a new poetry project on the theme of climate change....

The cuckoo's gone

after Anon.

Warming is icumen in,

We have gone cuckoo!

    Blow hurricane

    And fire in rain

And blow tornado, too.

Gone cuckoo!

Glaciers are a-calving ice

And with them rise the seas.

    Tidal waves slam

    And dams burst, damn!

They kill the birds and bees.

Gone cuckoo!  We've gone cuckoo!

Gone cuckoo!  Farewell cuckoo!

 

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Quarantining: poems in the time of Corona
Magnetic Resonance Imaging: lyrics of love and loss
Those Footsteps Behind: around the world in 50 poems

Covid-19: the mystery virus

Poems in the time of Corona

 
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Magnetic Resonance Imaging: lyrics of love and loss
Those Footsteps Behind: around the world in 50 poems

The hypochondriac shepherd to his love

Poems in the time of Corona

The hypochondriac shepherd to his love
after Christopher Marlowe

Quarantine with me in latex gloves
And we will careful measures prove
That keep us safe, as we lack meds
To stop us dying in our beds.

And we will monitor our chests,
Hoping our lungs are free of pests,
And if we laboured breathing note,
Check for a soreness in the throat.

And I will bring thee morning tea,
A thousand pills of vitamin C,
A cotton mask, a wi-fi key,
And meals delivered contact free.

If pink eye strikes us or pink toesies,
Which bode ill like old ring o' roses,
We will take oximetric scores
And temperatures and stay indoors.

If nettle wine loses its taste
Then to the clinic we will haste
To swab our tonsils with a stick;
Pray God we are not awful sick.

The shepherds' swains are feverish
So stay as long as is thy wish:
If prophylaxis thy mind moves,
Quarantine with me in latex gloves.




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Magnetic Resonance Imaging: lyrics of love and loss
Those Footsteps Behind: around the world in 50 poems

Let me count the days

Poems in the time of Corona

Let me count the days
after Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How do I shelter? Let me count the days.
I shelter all the morn and noon and night
My nerves can stand, as headlines feed my fright
And tell me I should stay here in my place.
I shelter unless shopping just by ways
Of dire need, for wines both red and white.
I shelter wisely, like owls at a height;
I shelter calmly, like bats in their caves.
I shelter with a six-foot rule to use
When I'm outside, for dread of others' breath.
I shelter with a mask I dare not lose
For loss of sense. I shelter fearing death.
Skype, Zoom, are all my life; and by the news
I shall still shelter months: sixth, seventh, eighth....




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Magnetic Resonance Imaging: lyrics of love and loss
Those Footsteps Behind: around the world in 50 poems

The Vyrus

Poems in the time of Corona

The Vyrus
after William Blake

Vyrus! Vyrus! burning bright,
Spread to ev'ry country's fright,
What infernal quarantine
Could help me not to breathe thee in?

In what place of ill-renown
Did thy proteins form thy crown?
In what air were they respired?
What the breath that hath thee sired?

At what market stall or lab
Did thy spiky fingers grab?
And when a human came to eat,
What soil'd hand and what live meat?

Vyrus! Vyrus! dirty rat,
Via pangolin after bat,
What infernal quarantine
Dare turn me vegetarian?



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Magnetic Resonance Imaging: lyrics of love and loss
Those Footsteps Behind: around the world in 50 poems

Daffodils

Poems in the time of Corona

Daffodils
after William Wordsworth

I pondered Covid in my house
Then at the shop where minor thrills
Were all there was to please my spouse:
A vase of mouldy daffodils.
Lone on the shelf, behind the glass,
Limp in a clump of dry, brown grass.

Nevertheless, I claimed my prize
And took my place within the line
Stretched from the checkout to the pies
Behind the baker's old 'closed' sign.
Ten thousand customers, I thought,
Had passed this way and coughed and bought.

Towards the cashier I advanced,
Not daring to adjust my mask,
Which tickled as my neighbours glanced
With envy at my golden flask:
Yes, I had sprightly swooped to buy
A Riesling that had caught my eye.

So now when on my couch I lie,
Made pensive by a sudden chill,
I take a sip of wine and sigh
How daffodils might make me ill.
At least I have some peaceful hours:
My spouse adores those bloody flowers.



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Magnetic Resonance Imaging: lyrics of love and loss
Those Footsteps Behind: around the world in 50 poems

Do not go out at night, stay in by day

Poems in the time of Corona

Do not go out at night, stay in by day
after Dylan Thomas

Do not go out at night, stay in by day;
To stop the rage of Covid, do what's right.
Since this began, my temples have turned grey.

We may not like it, but it is the way;
Support the nurses, clap, switch on your light:
Do not go out at night, stay in by day.

Return your concert tickets, scrap your play,
Or all those graphs will leap from height to height;
Since this began, my temples have turned grey.

Log in online and order take-away
Then use your balcony to fly a kite;
Do not go out at night, stay in by day.

When this is over, we can proudly say
We faced adversity but did alright.
Since this began, my temples have turned grey.

Go gentle with yourself; pour Cabernet.
Yes, you can do this; just keep up the fight:
Do not go out at night, stay in by day.
Since this began, my temples have turned grey.




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Magnetic Resonance Imaging: lyrics of love and loss
Those Footsteps Behind: around the world in 50 poems

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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Magnetic Resonance Imaging: lyrics of love and loss
Those Footsteps Behind: around the world in 50 poems

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.




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Magnetic Resonance Imaging: lyrics of love and loss
Those Footsteps Behind: around the world in 50 poems

Hi, Windows!

Poems in the time of Corona

Hi, Windows!
A Philip Larkin montage

Erotic messaging began
in the year two thousand and three,
which was a little too late for me.

Now we live our daze online,

where Windows lets your mum and dad
mail each other from separate rooms,
discussing what's for lunch and mad
the restaurant sends you plastic spoons.

I'd bring the plumber and the electrician
running over the fields
to begin my kitchen afresh,

but instead there's Larkin's priest and doctor
on cable news
saying they were out of gowns,
showing a ventilator unbroken.



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Magnetic Resonance Imaging: lyrics of love and loss
Those Footsteps Behind: around the world in 50 poems

Just another Covid Sunday

Poems in the time of Corona

Just another Covid Sunday

Easter time,
and all the little Covids
are playing in the park,

chicks chirping, bunnies hopping,
kids sheltering in place

with Friends on repeat
and a bowl of last week's spaghetti,

as Yeats's falcon
spins silently out of view.

Our life is now
a survivalist game-show:
six feet or bust,
the latest loser.

As a century ago,
the brave are ordered over the top
with insufficient cover,

this time in scrubs
not ammunition boots,

this time with us entrenched behind,
cowering from an invisible air force,
applauding when we reach another sundown,

wondering if nature
will grant us resurrection,

another hour to come round at last,

to heal,
to find conviction,
transform, rebalance, set right.




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Magnetic Resonance Imaging: lyrics of love and loss
Those Footsteps Behind: around the world in 50 poems

Waiting to reread Beckett

Poems in the time of Corona

Waiting to reread Beckett

The news is in quarantine.

That sneezing fit
that surely had my neighbour dive for cover
yesterday
is not the Bogeybug du jour

but dust from disturbed authors
as I rearrange my bookshelf.

Killing days,

I imagine gloved, gowned Doc Quixote
challenge beckoning crowds of crowned virions
as Sancho disinfects his lances,

or Doctor Ahab, unprotected,
grapple to the last with the spikes
on a spherical proteinaceous foe.

Heroes in the mould of Bolingbroke
for a realm grown tired of Hamlet;

Covid's Metamorphoses –
let's not go there.

Still, eh,

stacked at the back,
glimmering brighter
as times turn rough,

as well they might,
as well they will,

breathes Samuel,
wordless, unmoving,
ready.

For now, though,
he can wait.




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Magnetic Resonance Imaging: lyrics of love and loss
Those Footsteps Behind: around the world in 50 poems

Brian Patten read a poem of mine

Poems in the time of Corona

Brian Patten read a poem of mine

The universe is upside-down;
Brian Patten read a poem of mine.

He may have said some words aloud
or clicked delete without a thought.
It's all the same.
Brian Patten read a poem of mine.

He wouldn't recognise my name;
it's likely that we'll never meet.
It's of no account.
Brian Patten read a poem of mine.

Now when the undertakers come
for an epitaph to adorn my tomb,
it's here and done:
Brian Patten read a poem of mine.



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

Our staff recommends

Poems in the time of Corona

Our staff recommends

The thumbnail faces
at the online bookstore
are, bar one,
twenty-something,
smooth in symmetry,
certain in knowing looks,
sure
they'll be forever young,
forever clever,

never fattening into middle-age,
never growing doubtful.

With dithering decisiveness
I order the exception

because for all the social distance,
who let Charles Bukowski in here?

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Magnetic Resonance Imaging: lyrics of love and loss
Those Footsteps Behind: around the world in 50 poems