Today’s poem has been chosen and introduced by Teacher of English and Classics, Mr Andrew Macdonald-Brown.
This time last year, you will recall, things were just starting to get serious for us. Coronavirus was no longer a rumour from abroad – it was officially here. Returning to school on the Monday after February Half Term, we were greeted by a notice on the front door commanding anyone who’d been to northern Italy over the holiday to go home immediately and quarantine. Quarantine! Inside the school, hand-washing was the new big thing. Lockdowns, remote learning and all the rest of it lay just ahead of us, still unimagined…
A year later, and, as well as looking forward to imminent release from Lockdown#3, I also find myself in a strange way looking forward to looking back (if you see what I mean) at this quite unexpected and extraordinary shared experience.
Today’s poem – Harbour by Grace Nichols – is about that feeling of anticipated nostalgia. Written last May, it has already acquired a more straightforwardly nostalgic quality, since the lockdown it describes – Lockdown#1 – was quite different in its details and flavour to the current one, and now seems such a long time ago. The poem’s great moment is at the end, when Nichols suddenly shakes off all nostalgia for ‘this strange web of our togetherness’ woven in lockdown:
‘But watch how easily I’ll trade it – / for the simple harbour of a hug.’ Yes, yes, yes.
Harbour
When it’s all over and hopefully it will be over,
I’ll probably look back and miss
this strange web of our togetherness –
The impromptu arias at windows
and balconies, the orchestras of pots
and pans and hands beating a metronome
Of gratitude to keep airborne
the spirits of our nurses, doctors,
all our care-workers –
The live streaming of ballet dancers
pirouetting trickily around their children,
now like everyone at home –
All the WhatsApp calls and video links
from friends and relatives, my daughters’ faces
surfacing on the small sky of my mobile –
Yes, the virtual world can console.
But watch how easily I’ll trade it –
for the simple harbour of a hug.
Grace Nichols
This poem was published in an online project called Write Where We Are Now, created by Carol Ann Duffy with Manchester Metropolitan University. From February to 30th June 2020, they published new poems daily by poets from around the world. Many of the titles are immediately evocative: ‘Covid Morning’, ‘Masks’, ‘Applause’, ‘The Pundits Will Have Their Say’, ‘Sonnets of Separation’, ‘Lockdown Bluebells’, ‘Through The Window’, ‘Grandma’s Lament’, ‘My Son Comes To The Door And We Practise Social Distancing’, ‘Love As A Global Pandemic’, ‘Barnard Castle’… Most of these poems – like the newspaper columns, the blogs, the tweets and memes – will no doubt fade in time. But the best will survive: poems are good at that.
Poem of the Day portrait image painted by Head of Art, David Edes
