Reading Tennyson on pandemic days

A deadly number game has befallen us We keep count like never before.

Why are we weigh’d upon with heaviness, And utterly consumed with sharp distress,

Zero

No business

Cash registers forcibly closed.

Someone has blundered.

One

A metre away

Close proximity frowned on.

The day to night, the night to morn, And day and night I am left alone

Two

Couples self-isolate Prescribed companionship.

And when I raised my eyes, above They met with two so full and bright – Such eyes! I swear to you, my love, That these have never lost their light.

Fourteen

Days of self-isolation Thoughts of self and others

For every worm beneath the moon Draws different threads, and late and soon

Spins, toiling out his own cocoon.

Seventeen

Mark this date in November twenty nineteen

Dark cloud released upon us.

Cursed be the social lies that warp us from the living truth

Nineteen

That dastardly Coronavirus Of fevers, breathlessness and dying.

“You must begone,” said Death, “these walks are mine.”

Twenty

Seconds of hopeful hand washing Seconds to hold your breath

Behold, we know not anything; I can but trust that good shall fall At last – far off – at last to all, And every winter change to spring.

Thirty Lockdown days Crying out for more

The tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me.

Thirty-seven

The norm in Centigrade The bar best not to cross

The heart will cease to beat; For all things must die.

Zero the number of dead we want Light a distance away.

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Malachi Edwin Vethamani is a poet, writer, critic and bibliographer. He is currently Professor of Modern English Literature at the School of English, University of Nottingham Malaysia. His publications include: Coitus Interruptus And Other

Stories (2018), two collections of poems, Life Happens (Maya Press, 2017) and

Complicated Lives (Maya Press, 2016).