COVID-19

In the embrace of what I call the feverish agony of my bout with this twenty-first century plague I marveled about how an eighteenth century English poet could foresee and reflect so precisely upon the human condition in which our post-Trump planet finds itself today, two centuries later.

Many a hearth upon our dark globe sighs after many a vanish’d face,

Many a planet by many a sun may roll with a dust of a vanish’d race.

Raving politics, never at rest—as this poor earth’s pale history runs,—

What is it all but a trouble of ants in the gleam of a million million of suns?

Lies upon this side, lies upon that side, truthless violence mourn’d by the Wise,

Thousands of voices drowning his own in a popular torrent of lies upon lies;

Stately purposes, valor in battle, glorious annals of army and fleet,

Death for the right cause, death for the wrong cause, trumpets of victory, groans of defeat;

Innocence seeth’d in her mother’s milk, and Charity setting the martyr aflame;

Thraldom who walks with the banner of Freedom, and recks not to ruin a realm in her name;

Faith at her zenith, or all but lost in the gloom of doubts that darken the schools;

Craft with a bunch of all-heal in her hand, follow’d up by her vassal legion of fools;

Trade flying over a thousand seas with her spice and her vintage, her silk and her corn;

Desolate offing, sailorless harbors, famishing populace, wharves forlorn;

Star of the morning, Hope in the sunrise; gloom of the evening, Life at a close;

Pleasure who flaunts on her wide downway with her flying robe and her poison’d rose;

Pain, that has crawl’d from the corpse of Pleasure, a worm which writhes all day, and at night

Stirs up again in the heart of the sleeper, and stings him back to the curse of the light.

* * *

As usual, you’ll turn on the TV and find that someone, somewhere – on one of the channels for sure – will tell you that, shortly, the Donald will be found guilty of having broken the law.

PAY NO HEED. IT’S APRIL FOOLS’ DAY.