Corona

 

Candles unwaned are snuffed out too soon,

Orange glows fading to empty black;

Rare is the joy that pierces the gloom,

Overwhelming is the anxiety of attack.

No one is safe now, there is no cocoon,

And naught to do but cry alack.

 

Carnage, ceaseless and ghastly, fills our sight,

Obituaries unwritten and tragedies untold crowd every hall;

Raw terror and plain powerlessness smother all light

Obscuring the future behind an unsurmountable wall;

Nothing in our new world seems truly bright,

As the abject fear and cold despair consumes us all.

 

Crowded streets are now bereft of souls,

Once thriving cities have become a grave;

Rarely do we peek out of our holes:

Our own houses that as cages enslave;

Never has the silence taken such tolls,

As the world drowns in a noisy wave.

 

Cries unheeded flit breathlessly through the salted air,

Of the shore of the treacherous sea where we are;

Riptides are common, abrupt and silent and there –

Obliterating structures and dragging some too far;

Night here seems eternal, pressing and unfair,

As the darkness swallows every star.

 

Corpses innumerous crowd the morgue; overtaxed heath care systems breakdown

Our petty boundaries crash, we unite in terror.

Regents proud and strong must never bow down,

Or cower before an enemy unseen; however –

Nature herself seems to scorn our crown

And so, we fall from our pedestal – forever.