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.
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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
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