This Easter Poem by Mark Heathcote

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.