Social Distancing Elegy

Oh, children! Where are you marching off to today?
Oh, children! Where are you stomping off to today?
Are you going down to St. James Infirmary?
– (No, Lord, I’m staying home today.)
Will you go down to Maggie’s Farm?
– (No Ma, I’m staying put today.)

Let me tell you ’bout social editing
in the new math of justifying
the survival of the populist regime.

One soul dying … but it’s only one.
Ten souls dying … but not in my home.
A hundred souls dying …
– (Well, they were already gone.)
A thousand souls dying …
– (Didn’t know ’em. Save the other ones!)
Ten thousand souls dying …
– (Not in my constituency. Come on!)
A hundred thousand souls dying …
– (Gotta keep moving on …)
A million souls dying …
And it goes on and on …

Oh, children! Where are you marching off to today?
Oh, children! Where are you stomping off to today?
Are you going down to St. James Infirmary?
– (No, Lord, I’m staying home today.)
Will you go down to Maggie’s Farm?
– (No Ma, I’m staying put today.)

Some anticipate the far reaching effects of social change
in light of the new infectious reality
that proliferates an obvious impediment
to put their minds at ease …

Others pray for the doom n’ gloom of the end days
and hope half-heartedly when kingdom comes
for their holy salvation and release …

Starve the fever of irrational politicizing.
Feed a cold heart with the madness of fear mongering.
Lockdown or shelter in place is sanitizing.
Will social distancing herald psycho-social cannibalizing?

Crisis management ain’t pretty; it requires common sense.

Oh, children! Where are you marching off to today?
Oh, children! Where are you stomping off to today?
Are you going down to St. James Infirmary?
– (No, Lord, I’m staying home today.)
Will you go down to Maggie’s Farm?
– (No Ma, I’m staying put today.)

And the holier than thou
send thoughts and prayers
and sacrifice sense to a germ conveyor.
Holy cows and bricklayers,
propagators of ignorance
in the undertaker’s favor.

And the poor walk a windswept tightrope only to fall, as expected.
Shit happens; it’s why you got infected.

——

Note: Originally written as lyrical poetry for the music video below,
while “sheltering in place”. It was posted on the day before an official lockdown was ordered in Greece. Music & Lyrical Poetry by: Jay Leonard Schwartz (ASCAP)

How to seriously make a difference in this one soul’s life: