The Change
It is not that I see no future, she said,
but that I fear the future that I see.
A world where simple contact with another
is to be seen and understood as prelude
to Armageddon, the end of the world
They tell me I must stay away, she said,
from friends and family from life
No touching of the flesh,no salutation
but from afar, no breathing the same air
lest we all become infected carriers of our doom.
They tell me I must change my life, she said.
Nothing can remain unchanged henceforth
The nightmare scenario of doomsday is now real
and I must now adapt or die in a new society
whose latest paradigm is to separate and divide
They have closed the nation’s borders, she said,
around the globe we must all now fear the others
bearers of sad, bad tidings and the plague,
the ones who are different because they are
not our tribe, our clan, our family,not us ourselves
They tell me, for my safety, I must fear, she said.
Fear contact, fear contagion, fear my friends
Fear neighbours, fear children, fear you, fear me,
Is it not deadly this fear? More deadly than its cause?
The world, our world, may never be the same
Though we may die,
and though it may
lay sleeping for a while,
this fear once now awakened
will, I fear, never leave.
.
Kim Helen James 17/3/2020
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