1948-2023 . Retired Statistician, Poet, author, historian and campaigner. Co-founder of International Society for Bayesian Analysis and of the Edinburgh All Comers Writers Club and Participant in the 2019 UCL Eugenics Inquiry.
Search This Blog
Thursday, 19 March 2020
AWAITING THE CORONAVIRUS, a poem by Tom Leonard
AWAITING THE CORONA-VIRUS
by Tom Leonard
Dedicated to Lindsay Oliver
The South Sea cannibal Queequeg awaited death
On the deck of the Pequod;
Righteous death from the big white whale
He'd harpooned in a grievous way;
When death struck, he clung on to the mast
As his ship to the depths descended,
While his young chum Ishmael like an eel
Wriggled away.
I await the corona-virus in my Bruchton flat
My chest constricted as if the flu of '18 has struck
The church organist now recovering from his bout.
Is it death that I await,
Or eternal solitude?
Maybe the Hereafter is better than
Disastrous planetary life.
But Ishmael must survive
To turn the tide
When the young save humanity
From its dire fate
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment