The Plague, At Last

Early on in the pandemic, I told myself that it was only a matter of time until I got COVID-19: not if, but when. And behold! The time has come.

I woke up feeling sore and congested in the middle of the night a couple days ago, and on a hunch took a COVID test, which came back resoundingly positive. I have since spent my time quarantined in our guest bedroom, and will be here for several more days. Physically, I think the worst is over, and it hasn't been all that bad in the first place, thanks to vaccinations and what I hope is a fairly robust immune system. Any discomfort at this point is due mostly to spending far more time sitting or lying down than I'm used to, and to congestion, though I still have little energy or motivation. (I'm surrounded by books and want to read none of them.)

I quite smoking about three months into the pandemic. My habit had dwindled down to a few cigarettes a day by then, and most of those were purely routine nicotine addiction maintenance, so along with the concerns caused by COVID's penchant for pulmonary damage, it wasn't too hard to stop completely. It's now been two years and two days since I had a cigarette or used tobacco in any form, and I'm grateful that I didn't get COVID any sooner. I've got over 20 years of lung damage to cope with, and I sure as shit don't need that compounded.

I'm not proud to admit that I've been lax these last few months about COVID protocols, primarily mask-wearing, so I bear a good deal of responsibility for my current state. Things seemed to be getting better—or rather, not getting any worse, at least among the vaccinated population—and restrictions were lifted at work and elsewhere, so I got complacent. I'm less concerned about how this has affected me than I am about how my behavior has impacted others, so from now on I'll be more cautious.

All right, time to get some rest. I had to stop writing in order to repair the bed frame, which collapsed under me, and I did not have the energy for manhandling mattresses and box springs in a tight space, not to mention hammering nails. I am, as seems to be the case every five minutes since I got sick, exhausted.

Plague Poems, XI: "Memorial Day"

"Memorial Day"

At first,
peripherally,
a junebug carcass,
doomed earlier than usual—
looked at properly,
after being kicked
across the porch,
a trefoil snapdragon pod,
brown, brittle,
perhaps dead from neglect
before it ever got
to grace the world
with pink.


5.25.20

Plague Poems, X: "porch beers w/ Scott"

"porch beers w/ Scott"


driveway beers, actually,
getting warm as quickly
as the days—
spring giving in to summer,
isolation giving in to connection.

precautioned connection,
of course—
masks on, fifteen-twenty feet
apart, nobody downwind,
hands sanitized, coconut-scented.

we jaw, bitch, see what's up
in our respective shrunken worlds,
worry, smoke—
pretty much like it was before,
but also not at all.

and then he's on his way,
hopefully as remoralized as me—
 because who knows
when we can do this again,
or even if.


5.13.20

Plague Poems, IX: "Intersection"

"Intersection"


The intersection's always licking
its worn grey lips, waiting for disaster.
People blow through the stop signs
all the time, usually to a wild fanfare of
horns, screeching tires, me swearing
from the porch. But sometimes
cars and people get fucked up—
like ruined in the ditch fucked up—
and the intersection gets it way.

Stay-at-home orders and school closures
haven't changed shit.
Last week I watched a southbound
car and a UPS truck taking a way too
wide right unsuccessfully conspire
to turn a mom and her two kids on bikes
into the gory red paste
American statistics are made of.
The intersection nearly got its way.

It'll get its way again soon enough:
blood for the blood god.


5.6.20

"Vida" de Camilo Pessanha

Happy May Day, folks. I hope everyone's honoring picket lines both physical and digital, such as those at Amazon, Target, Whole Foods, Instacart, and Shipt. Don't be a fuckin' scab! Your convenience can wait; worker health, safety, and dignity can't. And while you're not buying shit online, you can celebrate Beltane in proper pagan fashion (within the limits of public safety, of course, since COVID-19 ain't going anywhere anytime soon).

Speaking of work, I've been translating like a motherfucker during the quarantine. I've got nine more 司空圖 Sikong Tu poems to put up, and I'm almost done with the first (very, very) rough draft of Virgílio de Lemos' Para Fazer um Mar. I also have another Camilo Pessanha poem for y'all. Once again, I owe this translation to Tashiro Kaoru, as I'm pretty sure I hadn't even read this poem before she wrote asking me about it.

Enjoy, caros leitores. Peace, land, bread, and roses for everyone. Solidarity forever.

-----

"Vida"
Camilo Pessanha


Choveu! E logo da terra humosa
Irrompe o campo das liliáceas.
Foi bem fecunda, a estação pluviosa!
Que vigor no campo das liliáceas!

Calquem, recalquem, não o afogam.
Deixem. Não calquem. Que tudo invadam.
Não as extinguem, porque as degradam?
Para que as calcam? Não as afogam.

Olhem o fogo que anda na serra.
É a queimada... Que lumaréu!
Podem calcá-lo, deitar-lhe terra,
Que não apagam o lumaréu.

Deixem! Não calquem! Deixem arder.
Se aqui o pisam, rebenta além.
— E se arde tudo? — Isso que tem!
Deitam-lhe fogo, é para arder...


-----

"Life"
Camilo Pessanha

It rained! And then, from the damp earth,
the field of lilies erupted.
It was quite fruitful, the rainy season!
Such vigor in the field of lilies!

Trample, trample again, don't smother it.
Leave it be. Don't trample it. You invade everything.
Don't extinguish them, why do you degrade them?
Why do you trample them? Don't crush them.

Look at the fire moving across the mountain.
It's wildfire... what a blaze!
You can stomp it out, toss earth on it,
but it doesn't put out the blaze.

Stop! Don't stomp it out! Let it burn.
If you step on it here, it springs up elsewhere.
— And if everything burns? — So what?
Leave the fire alone, it's meant to burn...

Plague Poems, VIII: "First Thing"

"First Thing"


When the virus rolled in,
I developed the habit of checking,
upon my grudging return
to consciousness each morning,
to see if I was dying.

Fever? Nope.
Sore throat? Maybe, since I
haven't kicked cigarettes.
Shortness of breath?
No, but if yes, see above.

I'm no longer checking my
AM vital signs first thing;
the heartbeat's horizon,
the imminence of non-return,
is everywhere now.



4.25.20

Plague Poems, VII: "Limited"

"Limited"

Quarantine and its attendant attempts
to put pen to paper, to say something
about anything,
reveals, repeatedly,
a smallness of soul, the tightness
of the heart's fibers.

There is no shame or
self-pity in this;
man is a limited creature.
Words fail, concepts decohere,
emotion is quickly and
thoroughly spent.

So let meaning be evasive and
feelings half-formed, clumsily voiced.
See being for what it is,
or seems to be in this sealed-off world:
contingent, halting, interlaced,
somehow endless.

4.18.20

Plague Poems, VI: "Condensation"

"Condensation"

streetlamps bore holes
into my eyes

neighbor's voice loud
but hardly clear

Hamish the cat
perambulates

the night: condensed

Plague Poems/Poemas da peste, V: "Na rua"

Segue abaixo um poema meu escrito em português neste tempo de peste. Peço desculpa pela minha falta de domínio dessa língua, mas espero que você, caro/a leitor/a, possa tirar alguma coisa significativa do poema.


"Na rua"


Sempre ouvi dizer que
em tempos de peste
não há ninguém na rua,
que a vida cotidiana
dos peões acaba subitamente,
como caísse um véu de luto
em todas as casas
e os seus habitantes
teria ficar dentro,
chorando e rezando
para o mundo como era
antes da peste
ou o mundo vindouro.

Mas parece-me que
não ouvi bem,
visto que vejo na rua
as multidões, armadas
com cães, bebês,
bicicletas, telemóveis,
sacos de comida, cervejas,
com máscara, sem máscara,
os rostos coloridos
com preocupação,
alegria, resignação,
falta de atenção,
medo meio disfarçado.

Não se engane, pá,
sou parte, pelo menos
às vezes, dessas multidões,
de bicicleta ou a pé,
fazendo compras semanais,
a vigiar o comportamento
dos vizinhos,
de saco cheio com as paredes
que estão a
aproximar-se de mim,
desejoso de viver,
apesar dos riscos,
na rua.


8 de abril 2020

Plague Poems, IV: "Big Questions"

"Big Questions"


The latest sci-fi book club
movie pick was Coherence. It
more than met the minimum requirement
of giving us something to talk about
while we're locked away in
our houses and apartments,
peering into one screen to discuss
what we saw on another
(or maybe the same one).

We like big sci-fi questions, philosophical
what-ifs. We got plenty:
Schrödinger's cat. Comet hysteria.
The multiverse.
How to deal with an alternate-reality you.

Watching other universes multiply
and collide gave us the chance to
flex atrophied social muscles,
talk to someone other than ourselves
or our cats or significant others.

The big questions remained satisfyingly
unanswered when we said goodbye,
took off headphones, closed laptops.

Now we get to figure out how sci-fi
those questions are
when fictional universes collapse
and we're left with concrete,
minimal-dimensional quarantine space,
inhabited by just one version of
each of us.


4.7.20

Plague Poems, III: "Sprouting"

"Sprouting"

undisturbed weeks
indirect sunlight
ambient moisture
force of vegetal will:

sweet potato
may soon become
plural.


4.3.20

Plague Poems, II: "Timekeeping"

"Timekeeping"


The 6:10 alarm on my phone held out
longer than expected, and only got
turned off last week.

I haven't been wearing my watch regularly
for a while; no reason for that
to change. Keep on ticking on your own, Timex.

Schedules are toast. Being somewhere
when the hour and minute hands say so
is over. Time is dead—

until you realize that well, shit,
you can't point out its absence
without being in its presence.

Might as well keep an eye on the clock
a little longer, I guess. After all,
there's another Zoom call coming up.


4.3.20

Plague Poems, I: "Two Guests"

Since society is slowly reconfiguring itself in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, I figured I'd write some poems about life under (quasi-)quarantine. I hope everyone is staying safe, being smart, and keeping their distance from other people. Now's a good time to catch up on your reading.


"Two Guests"

Two guests recently arrived
in the wake of a
halfhearted winter:

The plague feasts upon the
banquet laid out for it
in human lungs,
ignoring its terrified hosts'
screams of panic or denial.

The Cooper's hawk perches in the
live oak, picking off doves and
starlings, laughing its
staccato, taunting laugh,
boasting to its future mate.



3.31.20