The much vaunted app that seems 

to be no longer so vaunted if at all

the commitments that wither

almost as soon as they're uttered

the NHS Track and Trace tsar

a baroness who had formerly been

the chief executive of a telecoms company 

when there was a breach of thousands 

of its customers' data

and who left with a full year's salary

of £550,000 despite working 

only two months of that financial year

and who as a Jockey Club board member

argued against cancelling the Cheltenham Festival 

as Coronavirus cantered towards us

allowing a quarter of a million people

to congregate 

be socially very near to one another

and then disseminate over a wide area

potentially spreading the infection

with all that that mundane but grave phrase implies

our democracy 

still led and misled

by an aristocracy

the lie of modernity 

trapped in a form of feudalism 

until the hoodwinked citizens

of Albion call it a day and decide 

that they don't wish to work 

for such baronial employers any more 

and learn to print their own money

as our rulers essentially have always done

and what of those highly qualified and experienced 

scientific and medical officers

who are suddenly absent 

from Downing Street presentations

where they had provided a degree

of much-needed wisdom and caution

a level-headedness amid the madness

of months of growing terror

and a collapsing economy?

is this because they had not given 

in to the requests to back  

Dominic Cummings

over his lockdown meandering?

or had they somehow done themselves

out of their own jobs by allowing

their expertise to rub off on Ministers 

in a process of osmosis by the mere act 

of standing two metres from humans

who previously held experts in contempt?

Dexamethasone is a steroid hailed

in June as an important discovery

in tackling the disease

following a complex trial

(“the world’s biggest”)

that involved 175 UK hospitals

Spain had been successfully using

this inexpensive and well known medicine 

for this type of treatment since February

yes Spain

a country in Europe

in our world 

and not in outer space 

not beyond the gaze 

of our most powerful telescopes

the last time I checked

but then again they are foreigners

our professors seemed so pleased with the results

and any good news is to be lauded 

and applauded in this litany of bad news

but had they in effect reinvented the wheel?

importantly could an additional 4 to 5,000 lives

have been saved had it been introduced earlier?

meanwhile Macaque monkeys 

escape from an Indian laboratory 

with Covid-19 samples

a metaphor for our times

A five year old patient

with underlying health conditions

diminutive in her intubation

and her chariot-like bed

nameless to us

victimised

beloved

in this scary place

of scary-looking people

the sounds of ongoing urgency

of breathing big as a country

it's hard to read a person's face

when it's behind a covering

they say that with this bastard 

you die alone

no one to hold your hand 

no one to lie that everything's 

going to be alright

no one to say goodbye

goodbye

Brit holidaymakers in Malaga 

at the start of the outbreak

herded by the police as they're falling foul

of developing public health restrictions
 

singing and slurring

"we've got the virus na na na na na!" 

as they grin and stagger

clutching their tumblers close

the wit and the swagger

the representation

of a stereotype abroad

caroused but not often aroused

hope they stay safe on a plane

with one way tickets to embarrassment

when they arrive home they find

that the world has changed

they blink in a newly relegated 

and regulated third world country

that still thinks it rules the waves

with the desperation that goes 

with that change in status

that misplaced identification

maybe they should have stayed in Spain

or jetted to New Zealand which looks

a good bet if their borders were open

or anywhere other than Brittania's isles

which at a time of curtailed freedom

burgeoning loneliness

and a deeply uncertain future

are in the process of being looted 

by Government-approved contractors

parcelled off to outsourcing 

and offshoring "opportunities"

and ruled by an unelected special adviser

Children's rainbow pictures in windows

Thursday evening national applause fests

with saucepan percussion accompaniment

guards of honour for those discharged

from Intensive Care Units

joyous scenes of a joyful population

the best of us in the worst of times

acts of kindness 

of selflessness

sacrifice and courage

the rubbed-out outline of community 

becoming visible once again 

through the paper-thin official effort

the erasers in temporary abeyance

frightened by the zoo tiger

rattling its cage bars

let’s be tigers once again

and as for so-called “protection” 

for our care and health workers

some will be wearing bin bags tonight

if they’re lucky

our “defence” budget is £40 billion

tell me just who’s the enemy?

Hospital ship 

a sailing cathedral that brings its crosses

and enormous floating decks of sick beds

beautiful impressive hopeful 

and quietly terrifying

cruise ships suddenly

no one wants or 

wants to be aboard

no port in this health storm

the talk the imagery is of hospital wards

I've spent too much time this year 

in the halls of our National Health Service

but I wasn’t to know

entertainment is replaced 

by the thirst for information

which in turn is replaced 

by a thirst for entertainment

anything that will blank out

the unfolding horror 

every day we sit down

turn on our televisions

and watch the Government update

Ministers seem to be getting younger

at least those that have avoided symptoms

and as the statistics pile up

into a metastatic mess of numerals

we begin to feel casualty-drunk

and unconfident that the Cabinet

is up to the task in hand

so many people are dying

that they are beginning to have names

attached to their passing

such as the comic Eddie Large

I didn't know he was Scottish

the way our accents are quietly dropped

Honor Blackman expires

age 94 of "natural causes" 

which is now double speak 

for non Covid-19 death

farewell Pussy Galore

Our World King who art in Heaven

abhorred be thy name

thy fiefdom scum

thy will be dumb in slums 

as it is in Number 10

give us this day our daily dead

and forgive us our trepassses

as we forgive those that trespass against us 

and lead us not into infection

but deliver us our Hermes

for thine is the freedom

of power and fake stories

forever and never

amen

Two young men in the back of a small car

accepting balloons of nitrous oxide

the drum and bass booming

they turn it down a touch

as I approach

but are not laughing

what sort of animals are they?

I pull in next to them

the only other vehicle

on this bumpy patch of elevated ground

the gateway to the hills

to a sanctuary that has no walls 

but a view

a saner place of isolation 

in a curfew

what sort of animal am I?

considering whether a drone 

winging and glinting in sunlight

could be making a note

of my car’s registration number

for the incipient police state

the sheriffs of our private moments

getting away from it all

from nothing at all

what sort of animals are we?

Our loved chieftain

our revered penteulu

a fulcrum to us dreaming men

in the counting house of valour

a cogent leader

a tangent's goader

a guardian's guardian

a helmet against life’s iniquities

your troop of spear pointers

pennants fluttering

neither scabbard-scuppered

nor burdened with hilt-guilt

but astride hungry-mouthed mounts

the thin line of depleted sons

facing the advance of

marauding North Men

Mercians and Scotti

we dragooned Demetae dragons

toe to toe with those who dare 

a foothold in the shoes of our country

and then at Hyddgen again

feuding uphill

rising to the Flemings

with peat encrusted shins

flying over the tussocks

on skirmish shriek lungs

in memory of our history

in defence of our homeland

in the service of our captain

and the increment of tales

to be told around merciful firesides 

in the threadbare centuries

of our mute aftermath

our petrified veneration

(penteulu- the rank of captain of the household bodyguard in medieval Wales. In modern usage it means head of a household or, more literally, head of a family)