Last Word | May 31st, 2020
by Marie Hoff
We greet each other very carefully,
Like porcupines getting ready to make love.
Arms in big virtual, barrel hugs,
Lots of embarrassed joking and choking
Hoping we don’t look as foolish as we feel.
Hope rises and falls, and rises again
Like the panting of a small injured bird,
testing Ms. Dickinson’s thesis, that it
Never stops singing, no matter what.
Funny things happen: suddenly millions of people
Need millions of rolls of toilet paper: is this an
epidemic of diarrhea or what. . .?
Ugly things happen: an old angry man
Coughs in the faces of store clerks
And declares it a joke.
Over-liberty-drunk Americans proclaim
Their god-given right not to care
About their neighbors, punctuating their rhetoric
With their only working adjective::
Bullshit.
Then some go mad on religion and defiantly need to
congregate in large crowds as never before:
Boom, Boom, Boom-m-de-Boom, Boom– the savages are
dancing, let’s purge the devils out. Some for sure are
holier- than –thou.
Like J. Alfred Prufrock we cry “ashes, ashes”, as we
watch body-bags carried out from NYC hospitals, too
many even to burn or bury: the horror the horror of it
all. Let us indeed weep for our sins.
The jar of orange marmalade spews lies from its
mouth, while toadies fear to speak. CNN sizzles with
frantic sputtering to refute, and the band plays on
while the iceburg rises inexorably. The truth will set
you free says Jesus, but Pilate says “what is truth”.
In the land of the blind, there are no one-eyed men!
Finally, movie stars, sports heroes, and fat politicians
fall silent and inept; while real heroes (–-love that Dr.
Fauchi)--rise to confront the tiny enemy -- the only
weapons that work: science and love, real love that is
willing to die so that others may live. Amen, Amen,
Amen . Yes, Truth and Love will set us free.
[MDH, 4-14-2020]
February 28th 2025
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