April Is the Cruelest Month

          T. S. Eliot's opening line of "The Wasteland," "April is the cruelest month" comes to mind every April, but this time I've been rereading the poem. It's surprising how much of it is relevant to this particular April. So here's a poem:

To T. S. Eliot on the First Day of April, 2020

You're durn tootin', Mr. Eliot,
that April is the cruelest month—
this year, certainly, when
fear is in every handful of dust
and we latch onto the word of every Madame Sosostris whose
clairvoyance shows crowds of people walking round in a ring,
earring in restaurants, enjoying theater,
playing music in the same room where we can
hear each other without headphones
pleasures we miss this April
when we say, washing our hands, donning our masks,
restraining the urge to rub eyes and scratch noses,
waving to each other from a six-foot distance,
"One must be so careful these days";
when the unreal city is every city
with its ghost streets and its silences which,
in those unreal cities in Europe,
are broken every Wednesday night
with applause from balconies for nurses and doctors,
for grocery store clerks, postal carriers, and gas station attendants.

None of us had thought death would undo so many.

Our nerves are bad at night
frazzled from hours in front of the computer
reading books online, playing games
efforts to keep the kids occupied
our bodies aching for a walk in the parks that are closed
the rubber band of our psyches stretching thin as

April stretches before us
cruel in its unwillingness to promise a date
when we can leave behind the withered stumps of time, 
told upon the walls of our homes, in which we shelter,
longing to know when we can emerge with the lilacs out of the dead land
and regain spring in our step.

Hurry up, please, it's time.
Hurry up, please, it's time.

                                                                 by Diana Coogle