Homo postcoronavirus

I wrote this hopeful poem early in 2021 when the pandemic was still raging.

Geza Tatrallyay

Geza Tatrallyay

Homo postcoronavirus


We are all premature corpses:
death masks now cover our faces
as we walk around like zombies,
not touching, feeling or hugging
our fellow ghost-like creatures.

We quake with the frigid frisson
of fear that we might just crumble
into viral dust with the next breath.

At night we return to our tombs
of anxiety and terror,
and wake to morbid statistics.

Will there be at least one Adam
and one Eve who survive this plague
to spawn a new kind of being?
¬
One, who will treat this world better,
not destroy its fellow species,
the land, sea and air all around,
a wiser and kinder human,
Homo postcoronavirus.