for David and Mairin
We had a life,
we had a big life one time,
not so long ago;
now, we only have each other,
and this house, this food,
this television, and this bed
where we still sleep together.
Hopefully, when we go,
we’ll leave on the same day,
at the same hour,
after a large glass or two
of Crested whiskey,
because Covid is near,
and little else.
Covid is near,
and no old friend drops by;
no young child runs boldly
into our arms,
to dispel the bleakness,
the perpetual emptiness,
with a sudden rush of joy.
Covid is near –
and the TV is on,
and the kettle is on,
and the heating is on,
and the presses are full,
and this is it: our whole, old world
radically reduced to details.
Reading through the poems, I was taken with the searing honesty in the tone. In ‘Cocooning’ by Martin Mc Carthy, we hear the fear, the realisation of mortality and the bleak loneliness that older people, indeed everyone, felt at some time during the year.
Cllr. Gillian Coughlan, Mayor of the County of Cork. ( From her Introduction to Cork City Council’s covid anthology, Poems from My 5K. )

