Niyi Osundare
Behind the many-zero-ed figures of the fatality count
In the welter of wails and painful pandemonium
Which followed the obituary announcements
There is a chilling pattern to COVID’s colour code
This proud Plague had its favourite hues
Ebony, sepia, or chocolate- brown
And a straggling strain of white, darkened
By cheap hard labour and paltry bank account
Latasha’s Grandmother went on Monday
Her Father followed the day after
She too succumbed to a breathless bout
Just six hours before her brother’s passing
There is no soul in the impoverished hood
That COVID’s carnage has not touched
Alas, the countless vulnerabilities in the famous land
Of the brave where none but few are truly free
Almost empty now, that tenement cage where for so many seasons
Several generations had lived and laughed and languished
Where the moon rose every night
On the darker part of a separate, unequal sky
In its grim, Malthusian rampage,
COVID’s demographics spot a clever plan
History is its pre-existing condition
With the predatory politics of the colour caste
Strange, so strange,
The ravenous appetite of this Fulminant Foe
Its morbid disdain for those who remind the world
That Black Lives Matter
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