Still Life with a Map of the World Outside the Window

Each soul is its own planet. The skies are still.
Look one way, the wild is back.
Smell the blossom, hear more
birdsong than we heard for a century.
Look inside. Home in. Video, zoom,
the family locked in and afraid.
Look the other way, a shy intern
is ringing wives
who can’t be with their husband as he dies
to say they’ve gone. The student
who signed up as a volunteer
is loading the dead in body bags, surprised
they are still warm. Your friend, your dear
friend, three months overtime
on a Covid ward and her face, her skin,
girth-sore from the visor,
her sleep filled with dying eyes
behind a mask. Look on TV. Politicians
who don’t care we don’t believe them
spilling lives like snow. Look on the streets,
forgotten holiness, deniers
who refuse to keep the distance that keeps safe,
cough in the face of a young
key worker at check-out. But look across the road,
your neighbours shopping for the old, the ill,
ringing round for food runs, waving, all of us,
at the door on Thursday night. Clap for the invisible
carers, risking their lives. Beat the tom-tom
for a world we’ll try to make again,
make better, now the only things to keep you sane
are the mobile phone and labyrinth
of your own backyard. If you have one.

Kentish Town, London, 28 May 2020