‘I dice one more aubergine’: When two friends conversed in verse during Covid-19 lockdowns

Crocus, primroses,
in locked-down Square Léopold
Achille. The plague spring.

Rana sent me a photo
of police on Hamra Street

enforcing curfew.
The boy I watched on the
roof of the refugee

squat was locked down already,
daily, among washing lines.

– MH, 29 March 20200

Daily lines burgeon
on Louis Blanc pavements, each sprout
five feet from the next:

human unblossoms outside
baker-butcher-grocers’ doors.

One out for one in;
gloved, masked, sanitised before
and after each yield.

The pigeons strutting the same
sidewalks heed no distancing.

– 30 March 2020

“Distance between us …”
she wrote long ago, and then
made it permanent.

Charpentier, Vêpres à la Vierge
(while I’m doing the dishes)

on the comforting
old squat black CD player:
for a moment, there’s

connection, if only with
that perplexed self, desiring.

– MH, 30 March 2020

That desire for self
to be more, more than terra
firma for virus

settlements, begets fresh creeds.
Parisians grunt and wheeze praise

to Lord Jogging, while
roaming forlorn as our streets.
Romans hymn and drum

Volare from balconies.
Jack Bernhardt downs ten thousand,

yes, minutes of Bones –
libation of eyes and wits
to fair Agent Booth.

The right mantra for lúc lác
spurs my quest across the net.

– KN, 31 March 2020

Across the street, a
girl stands lengthily at the
window, smoking and

looking at empty sidewalks,
sun-soaked on April first.

I wished the tourists
would disappear. Now they’re gone.
Watch what you wish for!

In purdah, in quarantine,
I dice one more aubergine.

– MH, 1 April 2020

Aubergine, once more.
Braised, bartha-ed, basil-and-beef-
fried, in any form …

The thought invades aurous noons,
leaves sharp…

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