Anindita Sarkar
Covid Dogs
Seldom a critic, he has a proclivity for chivalry
Kisses and cuddles from ladies he has earned
From Essex to Gloucestershire
Recruited for venerie, he shuns Coleridge’s delirium.
Concourse of six Labradors of fleecy visage,
Sheathed neither in PPE nor mask
But an ossified harness,
With an insignia bearing five-pointed stars
To rebuild the blight-stricken city,
Unlike Walter Raleigh’s ill-mannered hydrophobic dog.
They say he can sniff out the virus
Alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania.
Diagnostic tools or rather let’s say Don Juan on a conquest!
They neither snarl at nor bite a Muslim mortal.
Captain America the scion of our Marvel Universe
Is supine in his resplendent in-ground pool
Or, shuffling channels on the television of Brooklyn Heights
Occasionally ruminating on global crisis.
Nurses in death-stricken cities feel out of place
Like penguins in Kansas City Zoo of America.
They are on the verge of quitting,
Appalled by the massively ascending casualty rates
And to revel with their families
In colourful robes and tinted apparels
Unencumbered by the latex stinking gloves
Within their cordoned little houses.
Aren’t these furry companions astounded
By the ghastly corpses in polythene bags?
Alas! They don’t possess the power of self-expression
Yet they never lift a morsel without a permission.
Can they heft the stacks of money they receive as donation?
With their quadruple paws always on patrol?
Perhaps they don’t believe in knavishly cosseting assets in their coffer.
But will there be a Matthew Arnold
To canonize this Geist with a Valediction.
—Submitted on
Anindita Sarkar is pursuing a master of philosophy degree in comparative literature from Jadavpur University in Kolkata, India.
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