It has only been a week since the city has been shut down because of the rapidly spreading virus. One week of closed schools, gyms, restaurants, centers for religious worship, stores, and clubs. One week of not seeing friends and family outside the home. One week of small business not getting income, workers losing their jobs, ordinary people of all ages and socioeconomic levels coming down with fevers and coughs, waiting on long lines in hope to get tested, going to hospitals in severe cases and not knowing if they will return to their homes.
Social media no longer seems superfluous. It is helping us socialize from a distance, participate in activities we enjoy, stay connected to our communities. My son has been cheerfully chatting with friends on Google Hangouts. My daughter finds solace as she FaceTimes her friends. I FaceTime my 82-year old mother and take her on walks with me since she cannot leave her apartment, stopping to show her blooming magnolia trees and vibrant yellow forsythia shrubs. My husband and I do yoga classes through Zoom in our attic. All of these technologies help us manage the isolation. Every day this week I have been grateful to be able to stay active and connected to people in my life.
But this is just the beginning. This new phase in existence will continue for months. Only three weeks after the first confirmed case of COVID19 was discovered in NY, there are 15,168 cases, and the number increase exponentially every day. This is daunting and frightening. But we have to learn to accept the present and persist.
Here is a poem that helps me face the difficult reality of the world right now.
"Reality Demands" by Wisława Szymborska
Translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh
Reality demands
that we also mention this:
Life goes on.
It continues at Cannae and Borodino,
at Kosovo Polje and Guernica.
There’s a gas station
on a little square in Jericho,
and wet paint
on park benches in Bila Hora.
Letters fly back and forth
between Pearl Harbor and Hastings,
a moving van passes
beneath the eye of the lion at Chaeronea,
and the blooming orchards near Verdun
cannot escape
the approaching atmospheric front.
There is so much Everything
that Nothing is hidden quite nicely.
Music pours
from the yachts moored at Actium
and couples dance on the sunlit decks.
So much is always going on,
that it must be going on all over.
Where not a stone still stands,
you see the Ice Cream Man
besieged by children.
Where Hiroshima had been
Hiroshima is again,
producing many products
for everyday use.
This terrifying world is not devoid of charms,
of the mornings
that make waking up worthwhile.
The grass is green
on Maciejowice’s fields,
and it is studded with dew,
as is normal grass.
Perhaps all fields are battlefields,
those we remember
and those that are forgotten:
the birch forests and the cedar forests,
the snow and the sand, the iridescent swamps
and the canyons of black defeat,
where now, when the need strikes, you don’t cower
under a bush but squat behind it.
What moral flows from this? Probably none.
Only that blood flows, drying quickly,
and, as always, a few rivers, a few clouds.
On tragic mountain passes
the wind rips hats from unwitting heads
and we can’t help
laughing at that.
Social media no longer seems superfluous. It is helping us socialize from a distance, participate in activities we enjoy, stay connected to our communities. My son has been cheerfully chatting with friends on Google Hangouts. My daughter finds solace as she FaceTimes her friends. I FaceTime my 82-year old mother and take her on walks with me since she cannot leave her apartment, stopping to show her blooming magnolia trees and vibrant yellow forsythia shrubs. My husband and I do yoga classes through Zoom in our attic. All of these technologies help us manage the isolation. Every day this week I have been grateful to be able to stay active and connected to people in my life.
But this is just the beginning. This new phase in existence will continue for months. Only three weeks after the first confirmed case of COVID19 was discovered in NY, there are 15,168 cases, and the number increase exponentially every day. This is daunting and frightening. But we have to learn to accept the present and persist.
Here is a poem that helps me face the difficult reality of the world right now.
"Reality Demands" by Wisława Szymborska
Translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh
Reality demands
that we also mention this:
Life goes on.
It continues at Cannae and Borodino,
at Kosovo Polje and Guernica.
There’s a gas station
on a little square in Jericho,
and wet paint
on park benches in Bila Hora.
Letters fly back and forth
between Pearl Harbor and Hastings,
a moving van passes
beneath the eye of the lion at Chaeronea,
and the blooming orchards near Verdun
cannot escape
the approaching atmospheric front.
There is so much Everything
that Nothing is hidden quite nicely.
Music pours
from the yachts moored at Actium
and couples dance on the sunlit decks.
So much is always going on,
that it must be going on all over.
Where not a stone still stands,
you see the Ice Cream Man
besieged by children.
Where Hiroshima had been
Hiroshima is again,
producing many products
for everyday use.
This terrifying world is not devoid of charms,
of the mornings
that make waking up worthwhile.
The grass is green
on Maciejowice’s fields,
and it is studded with dew,
as is normal grass.
Perhaps all fields are battlefields,
those we remember
and those that are forgotten:
the birch forests and the cedar forests,
the snow and the sand, the iridescent swamps
and the canyons of black defeat,
where now, when the need strikes, you don’t cower
under a bush but squat behind it.
What moral flows from this? Probably none.
Only that blood flows, drying quickly,
and, as always, a few rivers, a few clouds.
On tragic mountain passes
the wind rips hats from unwitting heads
and we can’t help
laughing at that.
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