When they come to write the epics
Of these dark times, will a prefix
By a future critic opine “Woe is me!”
Showing how the poets fudged
Their duty as they nudged
Us all to roam through realms of poesy?
And will each gruesome saga
Drive its tearful readers gaga
As it adumbrates the politicians’ crimes?
And shall each mournful sonnet
Have the Mark of Cain upon it
Through the simple absences of some true rhymes?
For the poetical lever
That we need to lift this fever
Needs bards! Proclaiming rhymes! In echoing halls!
For while I guess I’m like you
And I’ll tolerate a haiku
In grim times verse sans rhymes is utter balls.
Nor will some weedy loner
Serve in just rhyming “Corona”
With “donor”, “boner”, “stoner”; nor inspire us,
And our victory will be pyrrhical
If we’ve limited The Lyrical
By copping out and singing of “The Virus”.
True, its name’s “Covid-19”
And a poetry machine
Might just wrangle that last number into verse
Though verses arithmetical
Are cruelly antithetical
To poetry and make the whole thing worse.
Nor does “Ovid isn’t bovvered”
Nor “Livid” have it covered;
Leave assonance to asses like Luke Wright
We need “COVID’s” one true rhyme
To distinguish us from slime
And set our yearning human souls alight!
But the one true rhyme for “Covid”
Is – unfortunately – “Bovid”;
That is, pertaining to or just like cattle,
And in this foul Pandemic
We need something more anthemic
Than mooing to our deaths in this great battle.
So leave your escritoire
And abjure the abattoir!
Plato was right, as every schoolboy knows!
Eschew verse, my dear old mucker!
We’ll obliterate this fucker
By addressing the repulsive cunt in prose!