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Poems in a Time of Covid-19
Read the following two (2) poems, and write a 300-400 word response to them.
They are written at different times in history, but they share many of the same sentiments.
Some ideas for your response: What do the poems have to say about loss, love, and fear?
Do any of the experiences in the poems resonate with you? (Identify which ones.)
Did you have experiences like those described by Angelo Geter?
How far do you think the speaker of Love in the Time of Covid-19 will go for his love?
Do you take this literally?
What have you lost in the pandemic?
What do you most miss?
Has the world gone back to the way it was for you?
Imagine reading the Dunbar poem in February 2020.
How does your experience of the pandemic affect the way you read the Dunbar poem?
Would you have read it differently before the pandemic as you do now?
After submitting your response, go immediately to the Discussion Forum and post a copy of your response there.
“When the Virus Comes” by Angelo Geter
When the virus comes,
Talking heads on television screens
will tell you to abandon ship.
To drown yourself in a sea of isolation.
Submerge homes in lysol wipes and hand sanitizer.
Engulf body in face mask and plastic glove
until it becomes second nature.
They will tell you to turn your kitchen into a panic room,
basement into fallout shelter.
Instruct you to grab everything you can,
while you still can.
They will say
the shelves at the stores are empty,
and not realize they are also talking about you.
They will preach from the gospel of quarantine.
Shout parables of
“Thou Shalt wash thine hands.”
“For God so loved the world
he socially distanced himself
from the very people he wanted to save.”
It will make you wonder how a hero
or a government
Can rescue someone they can’t even touch.
When the virus comes,
you will kiss your lover like it’s the last time,
because maybe it is.
You will dance on timelines
like decades are stuck on the balls of your feet.
Sing like a quartet is trapped in your throat.
Laugh like this is the last time you know what joy feels like,
because maybe it is.
And today that will be more than enough.
from The Post and Courier. Copyright © 2020 by Angelo Geter. Used with the permission of the author.
“Yesterday and Tomorrow” by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Yesterday I held your hand,
Reverently I pressed it,
And its gentle yieldingness
From my soul I blessed it.
But to-day I sit alone,
Sad and sore repining;
Must our gold forever know
Flames for the refining?
Yesterday I walked with you,
Could a day be sweeter?
Life was all a lyric song
Set to tricksy meter.
Ah, to-day is like a dirge,—
Place my arms around you,
Let me feel the same dear joy
As when first I found you.
Let me once retrace my steps,
From these roads unpleasant,
Let my heart and mind and soul
All ignore the present.
Yesterday the iron seared
And to-day means sorrow.
Pause, my soul, arise, arise,
Look where gleams the morrow.
Love in a Time of Covid-19 by Craig Santos Perez
I don’t love you as if you were penicillin,
insulin, or chemotherapy drugs that treat cancer,
I love you as one loves the sickest patient:
terminally, between the diagnosis and the death.
I love you as one loves new vaccines frozen
within the lab, poised to stimulate our antibodies,
and thanks to your love, the immunity that protects
me from disease will respond strongly in my cells.
I love you without knowing how or when this pandemic
will end. I love you carefully, with double masking.
I love you like this because we can’t quarantine
forever in the shelter of social distancing,
so close that your viral load is mine,
so close that your curve rises with my cough.
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