How the insomniac city took sleeping pills to quiet
we shut our minds off to the soothing lull of breaking news
swaddled in the inescapable haunting of our mind's relentless recall
Counting sheep shift over to number dead,
how many tested, those infected
Nightmare sweats don't wait for sleep in the Age of COVID.
Though the lights are dark, we remain the city that
Never sleeps, keeping a constant vigil, bearing silent witness
like a parade of ancient gargoyles
on the parapets of a threatened fortress
How many eyes have watched
how many empires turn to dust over time...
Yet we turn a blind 21st Century eye to the present
this is the deafening silence of going viral