Robert Wagner Poet Free verse

Notes About The Poem

When I was in high school, my term paper for Biology class was the effect of the Bubonic Plague on world literature ... a little different topic for the typical Biology paper. In researching the paper I read in entirety The Peloponecian Wars by Thucidyes, The Decameron by Boccaccio, and other literary works. I composed this poem with two images in mind. 1) That of the masks physician wore during the Black Death to tend to those sick and dying from the plague. 2) The musical image painted into music by Camille Saint-Saens in his masterpiece for orchestra "Danse Macabre". With numerous parties, graduation open houses in which no one socially distanced, nor wore masks all around me, and the line up of cars outside the medical clinic of people being tested for Covid 19, this poem evolved into what your read here.

The Feast of Fools: a Pandemic Danse Macabre

“Eat, drink, and be merry,”
the cry goes out,
as the party ensues.
Unsteady bodies, alcohol impeded
joints and limbs, numbed
commonsense, as they
dance, fornicate, and drink,
unknowing or ignoring
the Black Spectre of Death
who peers at these simpletons
through its beaked-face mask, 
patiently awaiting the moment
its sharpened blade makes 
its downward journey
upon the necks of the partying.

One would think,
armed with historical fact,
the simpletons of today
would have learned
from the deaths of close
to four hundred million
human lives, who chose
to dance in drunken abandon 
beneath the blade of the 
Beaked-faced, Middle Age demon.
Stupidity, as infectious as the plague, 
the one human constant
throughout the ages, 
dooming the dimwitted 
to foolishly dare pandemic demons
to strike them down. 
Brazen stupidity will not
save them from fact.
The grim Beak-faced Spectre
grins at their challenge
sharpens its ax,
… and strikes.

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