This poem follows the beat and set of Cavafy’s - Waiting For The Barbarians. Also, highly recommend both Camus’ The Rebel and Michael Coetzee’s - Waiting For The Barbarians regarding this subject.
Waiting For The Virus
What are we waiting for, assembled online?
The virus is due here today. Any day.
Why isn’t anything going on with the government?
Why are the senators sitting there without legislating?
Because the virus is going to kill us all.
What’s the point of senators making laws now?
Once the virus has hit its peak, they’ll be no need for laws.
Why did our president get up so early,
and why is he sitting enthroned at twitter’s gate,
in state, wearing his crown?
Because the virus is growing day by today
and Dr. Fauci’s waiting to stamp it out.
He’s even got a scroll to give the president,
loaded with scientific terms, with imposing names.
Why have our two spokesmen and celebrities come out today
wearing their embroidered fine suits?
Why have they put on masks with so many colors,
eyes sparkling with magnificent knowing?
Why are they carrying elegant books
beautifully worked in silver and gold?
Because the virus is coming strong
and things like that dazzle the barbarians.
Why don’t our distinguished journalists turn up as usual
to make their speeches, say what they have to say?
Because the virus is coming on
and they’re bored by rhetoric and public speaking.
Why this sudden bewilderment, this confusion?
(How serious people’s faces have become.)
Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,
everyone going home lost in thought?
Because night has fallen and
the virus is still coming on strong.
Yet some of our men just in from the border say
there isn’t a virus any longer.
Now, what’s going to happen to us without the virus?
That thing was a kind of solution.