The Worst Year after Eavan Boland

By: Eithne Cullen

About The Poem

The Poem

In the worst hours of the worst year

of covid terror, dread and rage

we stepped into the evening to

applaud the heroes, curse the fools.

A woman bore a child no grandparent

could hold…but held a little later

in the joy and pride she brought

smiles mocking the adult world of fear.

On the ward, the therapist sweated

behind the plastic of her masks

teenage acne came to mock her efforts

no matter how she sanitised.

A group of women cut up sheets

to sew them up again as bags

for washing scrubs, laudable efforts

practical aptitude to give.

In hospitals, on ventilators, masked

and reaching out to touch or not

and know the loss of those loved ones

meant nothing on a slide showing a graph.

And those deaths have no noble stature

the numbers never show the love

of parent, child or lover pressed up

to the glass, to see a loved one pass.

Outside the funeral parlour, two figures

stand –supernumerary mourners

who can only guess the words spoken

inside feeling bitter cold of segregation.

And though the worst hour seemed unending

:goslings blocked our path and bluebells

carpeted the floor where we walked

and fears grew less as lockdown eased.