Essential

I hear my books sob, the tears of poets on their covers, their empty dark faces tearing to shreds, their breaths ceased by virus's devil. There 's a lockeddown on reason: I run a second-hand bookstore closed, next door liquor store and tobacconist, open! Which is more essential, I ask in vain, showing my rare collection of poetry. I thought it might interest you this one is 200 years old, first edition. It doesn't pollute the air or the lungs, nor is a cause of alcoholism, its only vice is jealousy on the part of a novice poet. Ah jealousy is the mother of avarice, appeal denied.