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POETRY IN THE PLAGUE YEAR
Poems written during the Coronavirus Outbreak 2020
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Hannah Stone Leeds Hannah has published four volumes of
poetry, and works with composers and other poets in Leeds where she
comperes the Leeds Lieder festival poets/composers forum and Nowt
but Verse among other community events.
The poem was written in Leeds, West
Yorkshire on 16th April 2020 Our best friends In the fourth week of lockdown, suburban
house pets came into their own, supplying the lexicon for vacuums
left by absconding transparency and purpose. A ‘cat’ became a unit
of time, measuring how long said creature’s occupation of your lap
or laptop prevented human productivity. On Wednesday, I stayed in
bed until second cat, reading a new volume of poetry. (Duvet days
are SO pre-CV19). The exeat provided by ‘taking the dog for a walk’
acquired a value akin to currency, coins having rusted through lack
of handling, and contact-less payments, frankly, debased as a
cliché. It is rumoured that dog-walking may soon be floated on the
stock-exchange. Even mythical creatures like the Easter Bunny and
the tooth-fairy grew a new gravitas, thanks to that brilliant female
leader of a smallish island who designated them as key workers. I am
sure fish in bowls, and small mammals in cages also contribute to
our new terminology. Forgive me for being slow in learning their
language, but I have a cat on my lap, and Duo-lingo has got stuck on
teaching me the Welsh for ‘The border is now closed. Come back
later. Diolch.’ First Count First comes the Apgar score. Then SATS,
UCAS rating maybe. In time you acquire an interest rate on your debt
of mortgage, according to whether you are social group A, B, C1 etc.
PINS for bank accounts. Passport number. Yesterday the death toll
from the virus was 778 (excluding statistics from care homes and the
community). The widow could not know if the one man she had spent
sixty years of her life with was included in these figures as he was
frail before Covid 19 took control of his airway, yet he died in
hospital. We count as a blessing that she was able to spend three
hours with him in the night before his final breath. At 8pm each
Thursday, we clap for our carers and hold to account each of the 323
Tory MPs who voted against pay increases for nurses, who are now
numbered among the public servants we value so much. Now excuse me,
I must go and count how many toilet rolls I have left in the stash.
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