Poems on Corona Virus Pandemic

Poem 1

Song of Now

Now is a time when we can neither come nor go.
Now is a time when all is blocked,
you,
and I, too, left solitary,
remote from any place.
For some, it’s the time
for losing the rest of their life;
for some, it’s the time
for being unable to sleep because of the rest of their life.

Nevertheless,
now is the time for renewed introspection:
excessive factories,
excessive development,
excessive growth,
excessive publicity
imperious discoveries,
canny inventions,
excessive consumption,
excessive waste,
ah, excessive discrimination.

Now is the time for repentance, when the virus of endless desire should be flushed away.

Dear analogue world!
Clamorous digital markets on all sides!
In this social ordeal
now is a poignant time for philosophy in my life.

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Poem 2

Elegy

What are we to do?
What are we to do?
Moonlight is sobbing
at the sacrilege of burying corpses in piles.
We hardly have the heart to pray for you.

Retreating
in the dead of night with candle extinguished,
I wail at my own life.

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Poem 3

Two

We now meet the meaning of two,
meet the original meaning of two
that has come back through weathering.
How could such a commonplace thing
be so fresh and new?

So-called humanity.

Life of my own day after day,
all, save me, are enemies.
Leaping from the hell of myself alone
we meet with this,
so-called humanity,
so-called homo sapiens
so-called we, the mandala of the planet’s life community,

by the panic caused by Coronavirus.

One more thing,
our fatherland, our people.

Captured by globalisation,
having taken wherever I go, here and there in the world,
as the landing place for my life,
as my pseudo-destined territory,
captured by nomadism—
immigration, naturalisation, tourism, study abroad, business trips,

now I crawl into the land where my ancestors’ bones are buried,
into the nostalgia of my people,
meeting my own blood and forgotten dialect,
blowing away all anxieties and ostentation,
I greet the first night of my return,

by the extreme situation caused by Coronavirus.

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Poem 4

Tomorrow

Who is cursing Covid-19 as a devil?

With my massacre,
with my destruction, with my excessive self,
ain’t I the foremost devil?

Hereafter, we will have to solicit an angel
to reconcile us with Covid-20, Covid-21.

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Poem 5

Farewell, Farewell

How could we be blessed with pleasure alone
by the grace of Venus, the evening star?
We should overcome this breathless critical moment,
by accepting pain and sorrow.
And so
by the wisdom of Venus, the morning star,
we lock,
we open,
and send today’s coronavirus away.

Farewell,
take with you my wicked civilization’s virus.