WHAT IS EMERGING?

By Steve Roberts     

It’s another World Poetry Day

but this one comes very differently.

Wonder how many thousands

will be written this hour with ‘virus’

embedded somewhere in the text.

Like it has been embedded in us.

The scenario planners speculation,

Softly spoken as ‘not if but when’,

has emerged like a bat out of hell

and bitten the world so viciously

she recoils in shock and trauma.

This ‘once in a generation’ event

likely defines the days of our lives.

It no longer is business as usual.

Question is ‘Will it ever be again?’

At some point the curve will ‘flatten’

if only by so-called ‘herd immunity’.

But what pain, death and bitter tears

Will be left in its train? We see darkly

Through the glass of our tomorrow

And wonder ‘are we another Italy’?

Here on Africa’s southernmost tip

two hundred cases but none dead.

We wait with bated breath and pray.

What is the prayer that we now whisper?

“Our Father who art in heaven, Oh

where are you on this blasted heath?”

Golgotha’s cry marking our crucifixion?

Or is it, “Thank you, Black Madonna,

For waking us from narcissus slumber

To turn us back from self destruction”.

Or “Veni Sancti Spiritus, Come

Holy Spirit, fill my world afresh,

to love my neighbour as myself”.

I don’t know but I will pray all three.

Steve lives in beautiful Cape Town, South Africa, with his lovely wife Celesté, in a house they built backing onto Table Mountain National Park. Both are high risk from coronavirus, Steve with reduced lung capacity and Celecte as a cancer survivor. He has chosen to use his life-long love affair with the English language to share his thoughts through the medium of poetry. He speaks to us all.

© Stephen Roberts, all rights reserved. Not to be reproduced without prior written consent.