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News from the Seventeenth Century
Come, I'll sing upon his breath,
Or hold his lungs for scanners till they smile and burst
Out the answer before the question,
The lesson before the problem first.
In this day, a child called me ‘each one and one,’
But I name victims each one and one
More voice added to the message,
Sent through the socialized body, that none
Like truth, like lies, realize the media is dead.
Pick a pocket, pick a person, spot another who learns
To doubt the response before the challenge,
As I, unyielding, continuously return.
I was phobic for a time. Yes. I hid within the earth.
The earth! What marvelous days they proved,
For years and days and hours I danced,
Alone, ungathered, before our togetherness joined
Again, again, the bodies, we counted and chanted.
After years (and days and hours) in the dark,
At first curled in worms and caseous limb,
I urged myself out the mounds of rodent fur
And plagued, each one and one, till I could swim,
Through every far ocean: drowned the rats,
Swam to Spain and Panama; and Africa learned,
That a virus could beat the drums again.
Or, when people breathed easy, I became a bird.
A publicly gray bird, I whistled your vaccines
For H1N1: a new prophet blurts,
And speaks about the cure before the sore,
An answer, and not the problem first.
