Easter 2020 – for the NHS workers

(after Easter 1916 by W.B. Yeats)

I have seen them at close of day
coming with tired faces
from ward or lab among grey
eighteenth-century hospitals,
I have thanked with a clap of the hand
or grateful, inadequate words
or turned to my family and said
grateful, inadequate words
and thought before I had done,
of them heading home each night
to re-join their families for dinner,
of the fear they must fight,
being certain that NHS workers
now live where courage is worn,
all changed, changed utterly
a terrible betrayal is born.

Too long without PPE,
can terrify the bravest heart,
Oh when will the supplies suffice?
that is government’s part, our part
to honour name after name,
the growing list of lives lost
on this invisible frontline,
those who cared, at such a cost,
holding all of our frail hands,
through life and also, in death.

Will theirs be needless deaths after all?
for the Tories never keep faith
despite all that is done and said.
We know what workers did, enough
to know they cared and are dead.
And what if lack of protection
exposed them to the virus?
I write it out in a verse –
the cleaner and the doctor,
the porter and the nurse,
now and in time to be,
whenever blue is worn
all changed, changed utterly
a terrible price they have borne.

Poem contributed by Sara Boyce.
www.nlb.ie

Photo by Javier García on Unsplash.