Poet of the Week: Obinna Chilekezi

Coronavirus

our air is fouled

so full of these deaths, and

cries of help and agony

all across the globe

there’s loud gray’s elegy, of

sun turning inducing death gray, leaving

more weeping, all weeping, for

the land is coronavirused!

and the day soured

with fleeting fire of disease, spreading

fear across the globe, many trembled

shivered and died, and our humour no more!

oh what a Chinese gift

of this century

so sour and bitter, as

mankind dies by seconds

all glares

black, brown or white, as

death blooms on and on to the rooftop

and our fears sweep across the globe

this sun shines out death

and no respected of status, poor-rich alike

an unsmiling season of death we are

is it to blot out order and extinguish lights?

a state of war

mankind is in

war with an unkind disease

invading our space

but then

the hope, our hope

to stay at home

and to socially distance

our mankind

old rules to go

for us to survive this killing disease

and for nature to methodized

and social distancing to live any hope

for mankind to survive

lots of hope, there is

earth heal thyself, we pray.

Chilekezi is a poet. His poetry collection titled ‘Songs of a Stranger at the Smiling Coast’ is forthcoming from Kraft Books.