{"id":404,"date":"2020-04-14T10:57:11","date_gmt":"2020-04-14T10:57:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/?p=404"},"modified":"2020-04-14T11:12:48","modified_gmt":"2020-04-14T11:12:48","slug":"covid-19-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/?p=404","title":{"rendered":"Covid 19 (2)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We are now into the fourth week of the Coronavirus \u201cshut down\u201d, “lock in”.\u00a0 Reading back over my previous blog on the subject I can now see what an inadequate and superficial account it was, failing to express the real heartbreak and anxiety of what countless people are really going through. \u00a0I seem to have turned the experience into a preacher\u2019s son\u2019s diatribe against materialism,- which is perhaps a side issue, a red herring?\u00a0 For me to blame consumerism is perhaps typical of our human reactions to bad things happening to us \u2013 that we first of all cast around for scapegoats, someone or something to BLAME.\u00a0 The well-known story, which I have been re-reading, of \u201cTyphoid Mary\u201d, Mary Mallon, in the New York epidemic of 1906 is typical \u2013 how politicians, newspaper moguls, and Public Health officials combined to cast a poor young Irish immigrant cook in the role of \u201cSuper-spreader in chief\u201d: a New Yorker cartoon of the time shows Mary gleefully supping the stew which she has made out of ground-up human skulls. \u00a0In truth we know now that there must have been many, many other asymptomatic typhoid spreaders besides Mary \u2013 probably hundreds of them? \u2013 and that in any case her cooking probably got rid of most of the germs which she may have been transferring from her fingers. \u00a0It was probably her famous (uncooked) peach ice cream, whipped-up cream and raw chunks of peach – a favourite dessert among the bankers\u2019 families of Oyster Bay and Long Island \u2013 which did the real damage. \u00a0Being tracked down and then unfairly lampooned ensured Mary Mallon\u2019s fate, which was to be exiled in permanent quarantine, untried by any jury, to North Brother Island with only a small dog for company.\u00a0 Poor teenager Mary with her beautiful black hair, rosy cheeks, hot tempered brogue and flashing Irish eyes \u2013 a natural femme fatale, <\/em>witch hunt target,<\/em> for the busybodies of the time\u2026 \u00a0Yes, going back to Covid 19, I think I was mostly wrong in my previous blog to ascribe the blame for our rampant consumerism to our computers (Amazon, Google et al) who are after all merely the servants of our impulses.\u00a0 Digital communication is in fact turning out to be one of the great forces for good in the current epidemic with all its concomitant isolations.\u00a0 Applications such as Skype and Zoom are proving to be huge assets in bring people together \u2013 families, friends, businesses and groups of all kinds. Two of my writing groups, for instance, are meeting for \u201cvirtual\u201d work-shops, one group of friends here in Bridgnorth are enjoying virtual wine-tasting sessions (with real wines admittedly), and my son John\u2019s young family in Vienna are enjoying instant communication with their other, more fiercely locked-in, grandparents in Spain. And through our many fire-sticked news media we are getting to hear so many of the heart breaking accounts of personal deprivation, death and suffering which are the \u201cReal Stories\u201d of this epidemic. And I am continuing to try to tap \u201cpoems\u201d \u00a0– whether or not they are real poems only time will tell\u00a0 – into my beloved laptop-dancing microchipped personal computer. Here is my latest:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sand Martins<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Feeling low locked in<\/p>\n\n\n\n

against the spread of Coronavirus<\/p>\n\n\n\n

the incessant rain of bad news<\/p>\n\n\n\n

looking up I see<\/p>\n\n\n\n

how suddenly the sky is filled  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

with little birds flying too fast for the eye to follow<\/p>\n\n\n\n

white vests & chokers twinkling like stars<\/p>\n\n\n\n

skittering around corners  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

tying knots high in the clouds<\/p>\n\n\n\n

using the whole sky for their skating rink<\/p>\n\n\n\n

for five minutes or so the air brisk<\/p>\n\n\n\n

with their twittering clicking gossip  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

finding us full of insect promise<\/p>\n\n\n\n

as they pause in their flight up the Severn<\/p>\n\n\n\n

as if time has undergone some acceleration<\/p>\n\n\n\n

toward Easter its resurrection<\/p>\n\n\n\n

F1 racers taking over from the traffic<\/p>\n\n\n\n

of our stay-at-home garden hoppers<\/p>\n\n\n\n

think of the miles these passerines have crossed<\/p>\n\n\n\n

through the burning hoop of the Equator<\/p>\n\n\n\n

over the brush fires of the Sahel<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sahara with its heaps of hopelessness   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

how the Greeks even Plato believed that martins<\/p>\n\n\n\n

overwintered in mud bogged down like catfish<\/p>\n\n\n\n

not realising how their lives<\/p>\n\n\n\n

are in fact more wonderful than myths about them<\/p>\n\n\n\n

how our planet is full of the magic<\/p>\n\n\n\n

of migration like a ball of wool being wound<\/p>\n\n\n\n

by invisible electromagnetic hands<\/p>\n\n\n\n

higher deeper currents of knowledge<\/p>\n\n\n\n

than we can know or be certain of<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  for five minutes while those small birds passed<\/p>\n\n\n\n

felt free and glad to be alive  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We are now into the fourth week of the Coronavirus \u201cshut down\u201d, “lock in”.\u00a0 Reading back over my previous blog on the subject I can now see what an inadequate and superficial account it was, failing to express the real heartbreak and anxiety of what countless people are really going through. \u00a0I seem to have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-404","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=404"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":413,"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404\/revisions\/413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}