Lockdown limerick lament

#UCTLockDownLetters is a new feature on the University of Cape Town (UCT) news site. Staff, students, parents of students: we want to hear about your experiences of work and life in lockdown. Emails, audio and video clips, prose and poetry are also very welcome. This is your space.

This contribution comes from Emeritus Professor John Bolton, a senior research scholar in the Department of Biological Sciences. He wrote this on the last day of lockdown level 4.

31 May 2020

Lockdown’s a miserable state

You sit and you wait, then you wait …

You feel such a loner

As you wait for Corona

To avoid it, now that would be great

It was once just a Mexican beer

Tasted awful, but nothing to fear

Corona’s a brand

That could have been banned

But beer was banned anyway, here

It’s not a good time to be male

Or old, or with parts that may fail

Blood vessel rigidity

Becomes co-morbidity

We all feel increasingly frail

I drag myself out of my bed

Early morning, a brisk walk instead

But all down the road

Gagged in facemasks they strode

Feels like I’m in ‘Shaun of the Dead’

We hope soon the last will be seen

Of murderous Covid-19

A year maybe, or two

Like the old Spanish flu

Corona will be a has-been