A Line is drawn in the sand.
Then and Now, worlds apart.
Countries lie cleaved open
The peripheries have frittered away
Our false Gods, our myths, our props
Only the faultlines show.
Suddenly, one fell swoop has meaning
Borders disappeared. Jobs were lost. Lives snuffed out.
Like a sword to the neck.
You realise you don’t need much.
Safe shelter. Bills paid. Food.
Some don’t even have this.
You are thankful that someone is still driving the trains, cabs, buses. Someone is growing your food. Someone is cleaning all that you touch and someone is saving lives.
They kept the world running
As we scattered to our homes - the low-skilled. The minimum-waged essential workers.
Somewhere between Then and Now
Even words have become a farce.
And cliches have become truth.
We are only as strong as our weakest, our most vulnerable.
Our lives do depend on one another.
I stand at my windows and clap for the NHS workers. I wish I could do more. That somehow I could stitch together our collective applause to clothe and protect them. How did we come to live in a world amply prepared for war but so woefully ill-equipped for saving lives?
Boris Johnson has corona. There are visible shocks and prayers.
Bus drivers have died. So have nurses and doctors.
But we continue to dispense them out without protection.
Yes, the virus might not discriminate but we are not in this together
We were never in this together.
That alone has become clear.
A crisis never transforms anything, does it? It just reveals.
Some get the tests. Some get the doctors. Some get the ventilators.
It’s russian roulette for the rest of us
Between paracetamol and a prayer.
The world without humans marches on.
The sun rises. The flowers bloom. The birds sing.
Apparently, we never mattered much.
We all know what’s coming next. We have been here before. Salaries will be cut, Jobs will be lost. We will be asked to understand. To sacrifice.
Just us. Not the politicians. Never the CEOs.
Their jobs will forever remain indispensable.
The salaries always sacrosanct.
They say you can’t unsee what you have seen.
I have little faith in that.
The veil of the Temple might be torn
But memory is short. Distractions, many.
When the World of Then resumes again, when the bailouts finally come, when the same song is sung about who needs to be propped up and who should be left behind, all I ask is that I don’t be allowed to forget –
That it never really trickles down.
That nothing is inevitable.
Words. Priorities - everything is choice.
And that when all was said and done
Please don’t let me forget
That kept the world running.
