Cataclysm – Sanjali Sharma

The world is shut down for a while,
Earth has gone into exile,
The soil and the sun slumber,
Her oceans and flowers encumber.

She is awake and irate,
Her eyes; they precipitate,
She’s done with our deeds,
Exhausted by ceaseless needs.

COVID-19 has spread expeditiously,
Folks are breathing their last hastily,
A chunk of the world has already perished,
Hopelessly the doctors have hissed.

Across oceans, people finally unite,
To fight this disease, together with plight,
“No vaccine found yet,” reads the news,
Left behind; they feel melancholy blues.

The destitute are crying for bread,
Quarantined are the overfed,
The privileged have sanitizers and masks,
Governments are overrun with their tasks.

Economies, they are drowning,
Patients crying when not frowning,
Coughing their way through lives,
Astonished at how finances dive.

Italy screams in agony,
The UN watches silently,
As we live through a pandemic,
And learn to ignore the polemic.

So much is happening on this planet,
Yet each day a new sun rises and does set,
And asks us to end all crises raging on,
And just appreciate nature from dusk till dawn.

An unexpected bonus is less pollution,
As we wheel about in sheer confusion.

– Sanjali Sharma, Amity International School, Noida