Richard Pierce

Richard Pierce – author, poet, painter

Life, Politics

This Modern Disease

They built a wall of contagion,
A host of lies to form new patterns
No-one was immune against, no-one
Could resist, until the mesh became
Too tight to untangle or unravel,
And the net was complete.

They made a disease of love and touch,
A virtue of hate and isolation,
Appealed to the patriotic vigour
To repel the infidels of their own kind,
To make great again a crumpled empire,
And rule in the manner of undeserving kings.

A crow of unnamed wingspan took flight
And mocked their invisible borders,
Looked down on their pathetic oceans,
Cut through the air with unmeetable grace,
To land at the centre of the earth,
Its bitter effects unimpeded and unfolded.

A legend takes hold, centuries later,
Of how division begot the final illness,
Of how they fell, one by one, to an invisible
Beast fiercer than the plagues of old,
Of how the walls kept in disease and loneliness,
And deprived the world of healing.

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