This Easter

Were in the grip of coronavirus; this Easter - reaching more than ten thousand. The dead and dying are lying side by side. These poor souls are choking in defiance. Commerce and industry are still as a millpond. Tomorrow I must go home my hands are tied. The stars are burning like hot-cinders when madness descends in the midnight hour those that fight change are hardest-hit most. Tonight the house is woken by hedge trimmers. A lawnmower: it couldn't be louder no rest for a cemetery ghost. I hear another neighbour shout, holler 1 am I‘m an essential key worker doing my-normal, sleep-in duties only I'm a poet, I'm-no scholar I hear owls hoot before I murmur one—yawn; listening to these two loonies. It's hard as hell staying optimistic- during-normal times for a man like me; these times are even stranger than hell. If I account for all in an inartistic- way and shed a few tears in the quay, people will say he didn't hear deaths knell. He only quelled his fears with poetry, with the same kind of madness he speaks-of Johnson said it could have gone either way, it was-suggested his actions were-woefully- inadequate it required more of an iron glove. Then voluntary pleas to please, please obey.