After Mercutio
FROM ISOLATION: O, then I see Miss ‘Rona has been with you.
She is the common cold’s daughter, and she comes
In shape no bigger than a persistent cough
On the handkerchief of a councillor,
Drawn from our shrinking lungs
Out men’s noses as they pass in the street;
Her wheel house made of glistening mucus,
The chassis, of the wings of grounded airbuses;
Her steering, controlled by hidden algorithms;
Her clutch, tightening around your chest;
Her accelerator, of family gatherings; sports mode at public events;
Her chauffer, all spread out,
Yet not half so big as a sample size of hand-sanitizer
Posted from the home of a lazy price-gouger.
Her car is a sequence of RNA,
manufactured in the consumption of old bat.
Wash your hands; the world shudders.
And in this world she sneaks night by night
Through lovers’ mouths, and then they taste of loss;
Into shoppers’ carts, empty of toilet roll;
Over nurses’ fingers, that dream of sleep;
Over all our lips, who on illness think,
And oft Miss ‘Rona with mild symptoms plagues,
Because our minds are with news cycle tainted.
Sometimes she gallops over a Minister’s nose,
And then dreams he of emergency legislation;
And sometimes comes she with a landlord’s tail
Tickling a tenant’s nose as she lies asleep,
Then dreams she of water cooler moments lost.
Sometimes he drives over a soldier’s neck,
And then dreams she of cutting packing tape,
Of hospital beds, ventilators, Spanish flu,
Of his mother over Skype; and then anon
Sirens in his ear, at which he starts and wakes,
And being thus startled, swears a prayer or two
And sleeps again. This is that very virus
That fills the throats of dogs in the night
And bakes not at all for lack of flour,
Which once twice proofed much misfortune bodes.
This is the hag, when old maids lie on their backs,
That presses them and learns them first to bear,
and then to bear no more.
This is she!