Snapsong 121

Niyi Osundare

Strange, strange year it all has been
Strange like a seven-fingered hand
Our expected Year of Perfect Vision
Has been blinded by unforeseeable blight

January flung open the door
To a bright, auspicious year
With dreams new and heady like stories
Straight out of a book of a dozen chapters

A few shy weeks later a viral cloud
Engulfed the world.
From the House of COVID erupted a plague
The kind never seen in a hundred years

An orphaning, widowing Scourge besieged the world
Crowded morgues spilled over into constipated graves
Death danced naked in the marketplace
Crimson wails assailed the winds

Drastic lockdowns, noontime curfews
Compulsive distancing, shuttered factories
And hunger lines wind round city blocks
As the homeless trade tribulations with the hopeless

Twelve chapters later and the outgoing year
Still opens up like a Book of Endless Horrors
A diminished world is desperately looking
For the mouth to tell its story