A series of poems written by Craig O’Flaherty during the COVID-19 lockdown over March-April-May 2020 from his home in Cape Town, South Africa, starting out as a personal practice and through which many of us have found insight and inspiration.
We hope you enjoy this series, and that you too may draw your own insight and inspiration.
“Since we went into lockdown here in South Africa on 26 March 2020, I have been using my personal practice of writing poetry as a way to ground and steady myself in these difficult times. I find the time spent to reflect and still myself has helped to provide a place to go to when I need solace – especially being on my own. I’m going to start a blog called ‘A Poetic Response’, where I capture these and other things. Teaching myself to do this is a new possibility. It’s a world where we are tempted to react – when what we are being asked to do is to respond – stop – reflect – then and only then to act.
I think each of us is being asked to contribute in our own way. I hope that you are finding yours.
I’m not a doctor or a nurse or healer, those whose role has become so crucial in our changing world. But I am a poet and I think the small contribution that poets make in our world is to witness, watch and observe what happens in the world around them and then turn these into words that might help others to pause for a moment and consider what the world is saying to them.
It’s a daily practice for me, so I will post one each day.
Be safe in these world-transforming times.”
Craig O’Flaherty
A Mystical Virus
A poem to help make sense of what we all are experiencing in this time and space…
Shrinking Back
We once conquered this world
and blithely defined our own…
As Winter Comes
Our streets are silent again tonight.
This malaise has its own way
of being hushed and soundless.
Hope
we don’t simply want to be weeds in a plot
that’s become empty and overgrown,
Letter from a Virus
Sitting down today I was struggling to think of what to write. Then the universe sent its own inspiration –
‘What is the virus trying to say to us?’. Things started to fire and ignite.
We often de-personalize and objectify events or occurrences in our world – the weather, the current, flowers
even animals. So what if by giving the virus a voice we might start to listen to what it’s trying desperately to
say, that we are not hearing?
I took on for a period, the personality of the virus and tried to write a poem to say what it might be saying. We as humans are so good at assuming we are ascendant above everything else around us. Perhaps if we heard what the earth is trying to say to us – we might listen in a new way. That’s not to venerate the death and suffering the virus is causing – but all too often we only start to listen, see and understand what’s going on around us when we encounter suffering and disturbance in our lives.
So, here’s what the virus might be saying to us. The question is – will we listen, really listen?
A Language of Optimism
The essential palette that a poet works with is a vocabulary of language that gets woven to create imagery. An imagery that pulls the reader into experiencing their familiar word in a new way.
Artists work with stone, fabric, paints and wood. Musicians work with sound and the spaces between notes. Poets have words as their palette and scales.
Tonight’s poem is rooted in an emerging language that we might consider weaving into our dialogue. Words create worlds – possibilities beyond what we see. As I thought about what to write today, words began to suggest themselves. What’s a language that comes from the very essence of who we are, that no virus can ever infect?
The more these words flowed from the ink of my fountain pen, the more they began to take on a new identity. It reminded me of how poetry can take obvious or existing words and by using them in new ways, can gift them back in ways that generate new meaning and possibility.
In each of our own ways I think this what we are being asked to do – take what we think we know, or are skilled at and find new ways of using it – to help us as a collective, as we frame what being human in this new realm of existence is. I hope that these words open up new worlds for you, as you stand into the emerging reality that embraces us all.
Owning My Truth
Sometimes as poets, as in many other crafts, we need to keep open to learning from others. Craftsmen and craftswomen of old would often meet in village squares or around kraal fires and would watch how others made their pots or shaped their assegais (spears) – and then build their observations and learnings into new ways of perfecting their crafts. It is a way of learning we need more than ever in these times. For this poem, I learned from the poem of Portia Nelson, who wrote a thought provoking poem called – There’s a Hole in my Sidewalk: The Romance of Self Discovery.
As we all ponder deeply about what is happening to the world around while we watch the news or surf the web, it’s all too easy for us to seek who or what might be to blame for the virus and it’s devastating consequences. My sense is that we will not find a way through these difficult times until we are prepared to take individual and collective ownership for the circumstances that have led to this global tsunami of devastating consequences. Each of us has, in our own seemingly tiny or, in our view – irrelevant actions, contributed to what is unfolding. Choices we might have made in how we live, what we eat, what our needs are – and how all of these have in their own way contributed to what might be happening.
Until we step into that, we will conveniently take on the role of being the victims of what is happening around us – rather than owning being contributors and therefore, also the agents of the changes that might need to be made in how we act in, live through and imagine into, the world in which we live.
Perhaps we are been given a time to think about ‘what matters most?’. Are we using this time or, will we simply continue to act as if we are merely corks bobbing in an oceanic wave of distress?
This Universal Silence
Sometimes, the words that accompany what’s written can’t say as much as what’s written. It’s a late Friday evening. Each of us sit in our own silence and wait for a new morning. A morning where new levels of this deep challenge to humanity, and how we live, arise. And then we need to encounter them with calm and compassion for ourselves.
The poem tonight comes in two forms. One being the words which find a way of combining to generate a way of considering what is happening around us in new ways. The other is a picto-poem – where words and imagery are combined to engage and create more sensory feel for what’s being said. Let me know how it changes or adds to what you read.
I’ll be using the weekend to rest and restore so that the words that flow on Monday come from a regenerated me.
Transfixed to a Curve
Words aren’t the only things that poets can use. Line lengths can sometimes create a visual picture that underlines or accentuates what the words are trying to say. Image and picture combine to invite the reader into sensing what’s being written.
One of the things that gets used so often by media and medical people with regard to this virus is the concept of ‘flattening the curve’. Keeping the number of people who become infected below certain levels and stretching it out over a longer period – to leave medical and hospital facilities able to cope.
This poem tries to capture in image and emotion the turbulence of the curve we are on – almost like being at a fairground and riding a roller-coaster.
What we do know is that roller-coaster rides end – so do viral pandemics like this. We need to not lose hope.
I went shopping for the first time this Saturday, since lockdown began. The empty streets were eerie and unreal – particularly for a weekend. Standing in the winding queue for Woolies gave time for thought and reflection. The memories of shopping at other times in life, as a boy, came flooding back. I remember what a tradition shopping-day used to be in times gone past. In my Gran’s generation – it was a social outing. So contrasting to what shopping is in our modern era – especially in these times.
Shopping had a ceremonial side to it – what one wore, where one went – who one went with. So different to how we tend to shop today. Any last shreds of ceremony have been ripped away in these recent times – to be replaced by new ceremonies of hand washing, regimented queuing and functional buying. Much of this might be good for us and our planet. But perhaps we had already lost any sense of shopping as a social outing, as previous generations might have had. Perhaps new protocols and practices will start to emerge about how and when we shop and what it’s purpose is. I think it’s only one area of change, to what existence in this emerging world is becoming.
Home Work is Homework
And then there are times during this where we need to see the lighter side. The ‘sturm und drang’ of the news
and internet blitz we sometimes subject ourselves to can be a real drag. In the midst of drama, humor and a
bite of sarcasm can take the edge off of what we feel and lighten the way.
Humor in poetry is not easy. It’s not like acting or movies – where the humor can be indicated and amplified by
expression and gesture. Or cartoons – which use exaggerated imagery. So the temptation is to accentuate it,
which can make the poem come across a little overblown. It’s probably better to use irony, that’s what I’ve tried
to do. I must admit, before this I never really engaged with poetry as a humor enabler. For me it was always a
medium for exploring the drama, mystery and sadness of life.
Sitting down to write this was fun – the glass of wine did help!. Laughter has a way of lightening life. I hope
that poetry doesn’t suffer too much from this attempt.
It would be so easy to be sucked into the most profound existentialist crisis that mankind, in such population
number that cover the earth, has ever faced. Humor is in us and all around us – if we are prepared to look for
it. I’m sure even amongst this mailing list, there is a plethora of funny and humorous incidents that have
happened to you and others during the lockdown, or laughter that has been generated from silly incidents.
We need to hold onto these. No amount of tears that we might shed in this impending wave, will make any
difference to our navigating it successfully. Humor will. Hope this helps you to look at the silly side of what is
happening around you.
Mountain Rain
They’ve just announced the two-week rollover on our lockdown. As if we ever we thought that it might miraculously end after twenty-one days? Almost like you go to try out something for a while and realise its way more serious than that.
This is a time we really need to be kind to ourselves. Especially about how our life has unfolded up to now. Amongst the unsettling times we’re spending trying to get our lives reconfigured, there’s the inevitable time we’re spending reflecting on how we got here. It’s times like this where we look back and ask ourselves what’s got us here and what we might have done differently.
In moments like these we need to be especially gentle. Ultimately, it’s all served a fundamental purpose in getting us to this point. A point where we’re being asked to consider what might be different going forward. It’s times like this where we make commitments or vows or promises to change things, live another way. There’s no harm in that. But what we really need not to forget is ourselves.
We have each reached a stage in our development where we are being asked to do the most important thing of all. To be compassionate to ourselves and to realise that we are on a passage to becoming more than we have pretended to be, up to now. To take the real step of holding and cherishing who we are becoming. It’s the most difficult step that all of us need to take – more than this virus can ever ask of or take from us. Challenges like this give us moments where the future can become what it was meant to be – in which we allow ourselves to be. As easy as that sounds, it’s our most profound task. Only then, will we be able to truly be there for others in their quest to come home to themselves.
Easter in some faiths is a time where we celebrate the death of some parts of ourselves, so that our true essence resurrects. It is the most challenging Easter many of us will have lived through.
Perhaps we are being given a chance to do things differently after this. But only if we love ourselves. For some of us, they’re promising rain this weekend. Watch the rain as it falls and drips down the window – and consider what it might be allowing you to wash away.
This Season of Fire
Was only going to send the next poem on Monday – but the significance of an Easter unlike we might ever have experienced, held sway, making it impossible not to reflect and write another poem.
The Easter ceremony has a lineage way beyond its accepted Christian heritage. The Nordic tradition had Eosturas a season of new birth, whilst Eastre was a Teutonic tradition honoring the goddess of fertility. Perhaps more than ever in our world we need to find ways of bridging our faiths, beliefs and traditions – without losing them, but unifying them. The true tragedy of this Viral spread would be if it separated us again as humanity, rather than integrating us.
Fire is a key symbolic force that enables the burning away of things, to leave what is precious and useful behind. As this world of ours goes through its own alchemic process around the virus it will call on us to question many of the practices and traditions that have become habits in our modern world. How much we travel. Our flagrant mining and deforestation practices. The busyness that is a crippling norm for many individuals and families. This can only have positive outcomes.
Whatever and however you celebrate Easter, or use it in service of your own beliefs – I hope that you continue to be safe, but open to what is being asked of all of us.
Day 19 – 14 April 2020
Voice Hugs
Easter has come and gone. The new reality is that this lockdown may extend for longer than we might have imagined. The hype that certain broadcasters and world leaders like to spin is that this will soon be over. The inner voice that we all listen to, is whispering to us that we prepare for something more fundamental. Whatever the timing of our lifting of restrictions is actually a minor point of significance in the estuary of change that we are adrift in.
What’s of more import are the changes to the nature of life that will prevail – before a vaccine is developed, tested and rolled out. Perhaps what lockdown is preparing us for is a new reality that is emerging, in which social contact, gestures and signals will be radically changed, forever.
In so many societies tactile connection is a fundamental part of our discourse with one another. For some time we are going to need to get used to connection without contact. We are fortunate as human beings that we have voice, language and gestures as a way signaling to one another. Perhaps this period will require us to say more than we normally do. To be clearer and more articulate about what we mean. Already, we are learning to be more proficient at communicating the subtleties of what we mean when we SKYPE or ZOOM or even call one another.
Today’s poem explores that added dimension of being able to hold someone with our voice. We will need to communicate more profoundly, not just with the words we use, but also the tone and melody of the sounds we utter. The inflections and range that we use might have to grow, to make up for what touch used to do. Our facial expressions might also have to expand, to indicate the subtlety of what we once communicated in more physical ways.
Our animal cousins already use sound in profound ways. One only has to think of the distance that whales communicate across, or lions when they grunt over vast savannah stretches and birds whose sounds float for miles on the wind. Voice is perhaps coming into its own in new ways we haven’t yet explored.
Le Buffon
It’s a time when Leadership is most required. As humanity struggles to engage with these challenging times, we will most remember those who in their own way, place and time took bold leadership steps to navigate us through. There are many world leaders who are being forced to accept and navigate their people through a crisis never yet seen in this fledgling century. There are those who will lead at the coalface of healing and research that will eventually allow us to prevail.
But there are also leaders who on a worldwide basis are being brutally exposed for their lack of integrity and visionary commitment for what is needed. Watching international broadcasts one is astounded by the overwhelming airspace that channels give to the current leader of the United States. The tragi-comical buffoonery of the current incumbent is almost beyond belief. And yet it’s a reality that would be laughable, if it wasn’t creating such mayhem and distress. The press conferences he holds are unlike any we have seen in any recent democratic context. Where bullying, abuse and disdain are standard fare – and the possibility of debate, dialogue and critique are given short shrift.
Many leaders will be remembered for what they did or said during these times. Perhaps, we should never forget his contributions. They are a graphic reminder of what is possible when we allow ourselves to go to sleep in democracy. Political cartoonists are great at emphasizing facial features or statements that leaders make – by choice or mistake. Perhaps it’s poetry’s time to see what it can do when it reflects in words, the parody that poor leaders can be.
Le Hunt
Before this pandemic existed virology always seemed like a dark art. They dressed strangely, toiled in relative obscurity and received attention only when breakthroughs were made. But the onset of viruses in the last few years has elevated their status and meaning in society. They conversed in a language of acronyms, formulas and antigens. They made predictions and gave warnings in epidemiological and medical journals, which we largely ignored. Now when they speak we listen with concerned fascination to their words. But we should have listened sooner.
Who knows what might have happened if we had listened louder in January? They’re now starting to break some of the protocols by doing live testing, and in some cases in ‘challenge trials’ using humans as the rats we previously relied on.
Apart from our failure to take heed in the busyness of our lives, the contagion is exposing another fatal human flaw. Our inability to see that we are being invited to unite around this virus, rather than compete. At last count there were close to fifty separate laboratories, on all parts of the globe, in the process of spending anything between two to five billion dollars in the hunt for a vaccine. The gods are grimacing at us, because unfortunately it has become more of a competition rather than a collaboration. What difference might a possible ‘Unified Viral Council’ make, which pooled the billions and coordinated and shared the efforts and processes? Perhaps, until we do this, the anticipated period for a successful solution will continue to seem like a holy grail – just beyond our reach. Even when we do find it – the likely period until it can be manufactured and more importantly widely distributed, is still not easily calculable. And then what will the process of that distribution be? Who will receive it first, within countries and across nations?
All the while, it almost as if the virus is thumbing its nose at our inability as humans to unite rather than dislocate. Perhaps the severity if its impact may change things. But until we drop those figurative as well as literal borders, boundaries and barriers, we will continue to struggle in our fragility. What will we dissolve our selfishness?
