They forgot to tell us
they had loads of oxygen cylinders
tucked away
and beds with clean white sheets
and feather soft pillows
There were angels to nurse
and doctors to take care of you.
They forgot to tell us
and let us die
It was an omission, they said
These things happen
We shouldn’t take it to heart
The funeral logs just burned red hot
Who knew who lay there!
But then why did the midnight caller
cry so plaintively
“he sat in the car outside
gasping away his life
and I sat breathing helplessly.”
Another had wheezed
“Please help me!”
“Get me a hospital bed, please!
I am so sick!”
I had wept bitterly.
And then there were others
on wheel chairs
with their heads thrown back
their feet flailing
as they slowly turned blue
A lamenting suicide note
and a doctors broken heart read,
“I am so so sorry, I can’t watch them die.
There is no oxygen in the store
and they refuse to give anymore.”
An older woman in the COVID ward
Staggered over to offer
her bed to the young boy
she heard was being turned away
“Take away this carcass,” they said.
“His oxygen level
is below 83
His death is imminent.”
“Give him my bed,” she shrieked
“He is my son!” she lied
“Sorry madam, this is for a VIP” they lied
And so “her son” died
Later, they sold the bed secretly
to the highest bidder.
In the dark of night
behind the mortuary
where bodies lay groaning
piled on each other
they struck their secret deals
of medicines slyly stored
and denied to the gravely ill.
You should have called
the HelpLine, they said
We were delivering
Medicines, oxygen and oxymeters to homes
Escorting the sick to hospitals
You should have known.
It was all over
Television, and radio!
And your hallucinating fevered
COVID 19 brain
Believed their lies
covid 19 brain believed their lies.
The elections
Are around the corner
The posters say
The vaccination is now free
The dead don’t vote.
Roopali Sircar Gaur, Ph.D. is a lifelong teacher, poet, writer, environmentalist, social justice activist; and widely published columnist and writer. Roopali retired as Associate Professor of English from Delhi University, and has taught creative writing at the graduate level. Her book The Twice Colonised: Women in African Literature is a seminal text on gender studies and post-colonial literature. Roopali is a columnist with Different Truths, a global participatory social journalism platform. Most recently, she has co-edited poetry anthologies In All the Spaces-Diverse Voices in Global Women’s Poetry and Earth, Fire, Water, Wind; and is the founder-editor of “Saraswati” an online literary and artistic journal. Her poems are also housed at Stanford University’s Digital Humanities initiative, and in the University of Bath’s Transnational project.