“Where is My Jab! My Jab!” They stab - “inoculate me!”

A half-a-year ago a vaccine but a wistfulness

And then nine months aback was thought as extant as

Expect a unicorn

Battalions crammed the science, would fulfil the ampules

Prevention potent if a fashioning a quotient possible.

A culture custom roused the epidemiologists:

Concerted competition, pay you down your stakes

Commissions, come, by bungs from government,

A salt that has politicised the race

Oxford versus Imperial; against the waging world,

Though is this strain so crippling, and if so, why

The rival standards raised? So virulent, so much a controversial mortal threat

To life, like Death The Leveller

Would not a broad consensus give assent, you’d think,

To a rather fine idea;

Since here’s Necessity rough hard-handed knocking

On a mutual and imputational door

High reason says; “Be One; for after all we are

All in this boat together”

The fineries of politics recite their line, a dirge

Of solid dolts

Bait hook – We** must be first! - by contest complicates

An elementary answer’s wanted nuts and bolts

But lo, a vaccine, two or three, in vied variety

The payroll politicians have their kickback pay

As groundswell from the people rises; expectation

Electorates of oldies first; then persons of provision

Who serve in welfare care the unwell people; then the

Milling rest

The likes of common yous and mes, the types

Without brass knobs

An impudence obnoxious rises, is receiving airing

As some ingrate curt emulators mob as though

Here were The Little Red Hen

Whom counted to be tardy; and one of the most

Indifferent uncaring of that wing

Too backward in her doing, doling out her regimen

Her from-the-wheat-fields bread

Too slow for those churl animals who scold considering

Their pedigree and rights

“Come, expedite your bread, my friend,

It’s high-time for my bite”

The claim intones the non-executive director

Clamant and opulent: no baker

Clod-pole whose putting nothing in that’s

Worth a vote

In truth deserves terse mercy:

Alas, these bickers, clamours badgering for the vaccine -

Are an equal empty cold demanding surge

*

The provision of the world is all of windfall

Is a swathe from God

What we conceive to make, by taste, by reason

Falls all from Him

As such do laugh earth’s crops outspread in local shops;

Our portion since day one

When this blest provender was first in Love diversified

Its swathe made ours

And soil to cultivate, and railways, medicines,

Container ships, the elements, and hothouse

Flowers

Through favour the Lord God disposes them; although

We would forget,

Would will a brimful galaxy, than what occurs,

Than Providential things should sharp and starkly happen

And herein’s danger, though we suffer, it’s our bread

And butter, being growing pains to resolution

A coming to a closing point, and so to judgement,

Of rigorous decision

Continuous confusion this germane occasion, even so

It is a settled gift

A salutation chosen by the holy Lord

Abroad beyond the lift

A work for rumination on, a perk of many ifs

Brings exercise in patience, prayer - a fund renunciation,

Refining over time, from rabbit holes, much honeycomb