Sonnet 248. Slow Clap. April 2022 in Hong Kong.
The cruelest month has come again. Again.
And treble-jabbed, and masked we hold our phones
Before, and then behind, machines to claim
The cattle-calming guard of Q.R. Codes.
A city, coiled-up, ready for release,
That hasn’t come. A spring that hasn’t sprung.
A people ground down till they acquiesce
To anything that might “Get Covid Done.”
That optimism Eliot disdained,
Or feared perhaps, is it naivety?
The slow clap heard in days we waste; this land
Has bred no lilacs, only cruelty,
Enforced through regulations, worse than these,
That wore a wound-up city to its knees.
Lockdown Sonnet Thirty.
Andrew Barker
11 июл 2024
