THE EMPTYING

Cathedrals are almost empty.

God left by the western door 

leaving only occasional old women

to kneel, if they can, to share the vaulted space 

with gothic ghosts, dimly lit by windows 

stained with the memorial red and blue 

for sons lost in battle, saints in doctrinal wars.

The emptiness has spread in recent days.

New York’s wide streets and avenues are cold,

despite the summer sun. The people have gone,

fleeing before a virus 

that if it catches them, seizes their lungs 

and eats the bleeding tissue – stupidly, 

as it will die with its host.

There are bluebirds over

the white cliffs of Dover

because the trucks and planes have stopped.

The earth is doing fine.

What will emerge after we are lost?

A new creature, sentient – 

just as capable of guilt? 

I wonder.

 

“On a day when we celebrate trust in a life that succeeds, I am proud and happy to accept the invitation of the City and the Duomo of Milan,” said the artist, who has acted without an audience, in compliance with regulations. from the government on COVID-19.

“I believe in the strength to pray together. I believe in Christian Easter, the universal symbol of rebirth that everyone, believers or not, really needs right now.

“Thanks to the music, broadcast live, and bringing millions of hands together throughout the world, we will embrace the beating heart of this wounded Earth, a wonderful international union that is a source of pride for the Italian people. The city of Milan, which is generous, courageous and proactive, as well as the whole of Italy, will once again be very soon a winning model, engine of a rebirth that we all hope for. It will be a pleasure to witness it, in the Duomo, during the Easter celebration that evokes the mystery of birth and rebirth.”  

Andrea Bocelli – Easter 2020, Milan.

CELESTIAL VISITOR

I’m visiting from outer space

assessing how the human race

responds to challenges of virus

in ways that truly may inspire us.

I’m puzzled as to what’s at issue

necessitating toilet tissue.

I’ve seen shoppers with bent backs

lugging multidozen packs.

Is the paper to protect

From a diarrhoeal side effect?

Does coronavirus, now about,

also disrupt the sleeping gut?

Sadly, I can make no sense

of this elaborate defence.

No clue.  I cannot understand.

I’ll fly back home – and wash my hand.

Koala

She’s in the canopy now.

The ground, dry for years,

has given up:

flames are laughing

up and down the land.

As she climbed

her child fell.

There’s another kind of thunder now –

the rain should slake

the fire’s thirst –

then the search for food

and shelter can begin.

The Splash

This painting, by David Hockney,

sold for twenty-five million –

so bright

but snap-frozen of feeling.

I see something disappearing.

It sprang from the springboard –

perhaps the lost lover of the painter –

pushed into oblivion

by a perpetrator

who retreats south-east;

or maybe it’s that elusive thing called meaning.

Does he who bought the painting

understand the price of everything –

so much for water, this for sky –

and the value of nothing? 

Surfer's Tension

This bright summer morning

at sea, I kneel,

contemplating

which to choose –

this one or that –

the best wave to propel me,

to shallow water

and the shore.

I’ve come seeking solace,

escape from the tension

of pressing choices –

jobs, friends, family –

of responsibility versus freedom.

Waves of indeterminate strength

and direction surround me – foreign.

I’m not strong enough.

Then forces of circumstance take over:

my contemplation is drowned,

overturned by a dumping wave.

Challenges splash like freezing water.

How to survive, how to regain my board?

But then I’m off, racing to the shore,

a sailboat in a gale,

but no longer with a worry in the world.

First Aid

Ambivalence is a euphemism: 

I felt I had been injected  

with the juice of an Amazonian creeper 

that accelerated ageing.

How could I have come to this 

and not yet sixty? 

“It’s hereditary,” the audiologist said. 

“Blame your father”.  

Sure, but he was dead, 

These memorial ‘mini-chines’ 

would inhabit my ears for years.

They made it easier to hear voices,

but hearing aids,

like nasal hair, 

add nought to intimacy.

Within a month 

I lost one, uninsured –

what a dollar shock.

Now using my fourth, 

the cost keeps going up. 

The technology will be perfect by the time I die. 

Solar Panel

In choosing nine members to consult,

the Sun considered the political disposition

of the principal planets,

and took account of the fractious

and frequently suicidal asteroid belt. 

Each of the nine members of the panel

was unique in its/his/her requirements

for life support – but by evolution

each had arrived

at similar stellar intelligence.

The panel was convened

to consider the fate of Earth. 

Basically, the Sun was over

the dissolute behaviour

of the myriad human ants 

and their unreflective scurrying,

impervious to advertising

urging them to spend more time

sitting thinking in the sun

sans iPhone.

A consensus settled on the use 

of two dedicated asteroids

suicide bombers that would blast

obscuring clouds of dust,

freezing the planet on impact,

cleansing the Earth of humans.

New life forms might emerge

and perhaps

not make

such a mess.  

“Worth a try,” the sun said,

calling for volunteers.