Plague Poetry

A Litany in Time of Plague (extract) Adieu, farewell, earth’s bliss; This world uncertain is; Fond are life’s lustful joys; Death proves them all but toys; None from his darts can fly; I am sick, I must die.

Lord, have mercy on us! Thomas Nashe 1593

The Pestilence

This pushy and unwelcome visitor creates a fever Of excitement like a fox appearing in a chicken run, Or when a recognised seducer smirks their way Into a teenage party; pulses and expectations race. The old identify a time that they dislike; The springtime flowers prematurely fade, The opera goes on too long and trips to India And Italy, promising warmth, indulgence and escape From time’s slow march, must be delayed. Our only champions – actively unglamorous Scientists in suits, and wooden ministers and mayors With earnest clipboard frowns and stilted diction. The club we’ve joined advises we expect a lengthy stay With shrinking funds, distress and possible extinction.

So far it’s been a phoney war whose real cruelties Have been inflicted somewhere else; and so, like soldiers Marching to the front, we’re talking sense and balancing The odds. Do we succeed in packaging the swift irrelevance Of beauty, wit, possessions, past success, courage And even love? Or does the fox untie our brains Before he does the business? Is it remotely sane To buy those crates of bogroll, beans and soup? Seventy years back our fear of nuclear war could just Be soothed by tinned sardines and powdered milk, Secreted in the roof; much later found and binned By mocking children and bemused executors. A nervous whine greets each defensive stratagem, Pointing its quivering finger at the obvious Mistakes and all the horrors sure to follow. Kipling would sigh at manliness so hollow.

The town is greatly changed, the streets perversely quiet Except where ‘supermarket’ stores, last month so firmly Calm and deeply stocked, must gasp for breath While from their doors, with all the vigour of a plague Of angry ants, their wild-eyed shoppers drag huge Bulging bags away. The little shops now look as if Their former confidence will soon be turned to dust And spread across their bare abandoned counters.

A 16th-century plague could only kill and leave; This modern plague may just be cheated Of your life – and take your livelihood instead. A brightly coloured blanket of apparent cash Descends to shield our shivering community And we are asked to trust that such a contrast to the usual Miserly restraint is just a sign of strength. We hesitate To guess what we will find when finally the blanket floats away And we can see what little has survived to face the day.

But when our visitor departs his grand destructive Triumph will be compromised by pleasures which He accidentally sired. For children, school at home Restores to them the proper custody of their education. Plenty of ‘art’, insane dislike of screens abandoned, And teachers grateful – finally – for their pupils’ generous Participation. Outside the birds and bees observe That garden productivity is being usefully improved; The sheep record that footpath walkers have a strange Good humour and, from a certain distance, smile incessantly At lambs and other humans, as if in sudden love With every living thing. Are they unwell? Or is the lack Of traffic in the sky above making them all so debonair? We’ll never understand; last night they stood outside Their homes and clapped and clapped the chilly evening air. Jim Peers, Fenny Compton, April 2020

I wrote this when the Covid-19 pandemic was starting to take hold and as a result of then coming across the Nashe poem, which reflects the British experience of plague at the end of the 16th century. That experience was of course more frightening and lethal than ours but nevertheless comparable, despite the enormous changes in society.