Influenza from Parlous Times by Peter Ostrowski

This time next year,
If we are even here,
Will this all be forgotten,
Or will it hang like a pall
Over our blighted bodies
As we each, stricken, fall?

Will the horror and tears one day end?
Will this spiritual numbness turn back to joy?
In a year, in a lifetime,
In what is left of our lives,
Will the Earth spin again?
Will the sun once more rise?

Brown and grey,
Blue, green, gold.
We navigate the seasons,
But now sweating through winter,
Then in summer stone cold.

Some say
(Though who can truly know?)
The plague spawned in Spain,
Then like a black scarf bound the world,
Crushed its breath,
Till fevered brains in their millions
Were snuffed out in death.

Who can tell?
Perhaps it came via Spain
From Hell.
The Great War is finished,
A war to end war.
Armoured tanks rust in French fields,
Gunfire’s no more.
Yet we wait still for peace,
Only to find peace is reserved
For the butchered and glorious
Lost forever in deep earth,
Finally happy, at long last abed,
Immune to the pandemic raging
Through the broken, tormented world overhead.

• Folk
• Rock
• chanson
• literate
• scifi
• Wickford