Lockdown

I write this poem in these difficult time to remember and never forget the victims of this virus

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-What’s happening!

It’s reality or I’m living a nightmare.

People forced to imprisonment in their own home.

The word on the agenda is: Confinement.

The elderly die, suddenly they end up living,

powerless, defenceless, no way out.

What a sadness:

Grandparents die without the grandchildren

or the presence of a son to be supported

in the delicate passage from life to death,

they go away and with their disappearance

we lose wisdom and memory.

-Old people confined in the house,

fear is read in their bewildered eyes.

The feeling they want to communicate

is that they feel helpless, frightened.

-Old people abandoned in solitary confinement.

-The elders hospitalized, traumatized, alone,

it’s awful they can’t be looked after by their family members

due to the restrictions placed on the entrances

to hospital facilities.

-The most tragic aspect: loneliness in the face of death,

is more chilling the idea of having to face it alone,

without the possibility to say goodbye to their loved ones,

It’s not possible for a son to shake the hand

of one who has loved all his life.

-It’s inconceivable to know of your parents death

and to be unable to honor them with your presence.

-Confinement can save lives, but for the elders

it’s dramatic,

they’re anxious not for the imminent end of their lives,

but to be unable to do the normal things,

give a caress to a grandson or discuss with the children

who today have acquired an inestimable value.

-Heart disease and diabetes are known and treatable,

but in the face of this evil, there are no certainties,

the virus will be fatal if the affected person has serious pathologies.

-There are those who say: “They were old and already full of ailments, without the virus these people would still have lived, a day or ten years,

it doesn’t matter: for them it would still be life”.

-Farewell to the elders, dead in the strawberry fields of New Jersey.

-Farewell to the elders in Spain, found dead in their beds,

buried without verification.

Pity for the patients of hospices in Britain,

rejected by hospitals, despite the abundance of beds in intensive care.

Massacre of the elderly in Italy to Bergamo.

Harrowing, in Russia, the interview with a daughter

who cares about her sick mother:

"Why can’t I go and see her? She can fall at any time.

What can I do if she falls? She can’t cook, her right hand is paralyzed”.

Volunteers, leave the food at the door and she can’t even get there".

-Grandparents: playmates for grandchildren

are gone away.

-Parents: guide of the children have gone away.

-Old people: who respect the rules, that know what is suffering, sacrifice, the sense of the limit,

have gone away.

The young people, instead, used to live in cotton wool,

in an unreal world, where death doesn’t exist,

They will transgress the rules,

won’t believe the right restrictions imposed by the government,

they’ll have a hard time believing this danger and say

“All this is nonsense”.

By Iolanda Leotta

From: Italy

Website: https://www.facebook.com/Jole69