Wamkelekile, Welkom
Lockdown limerick lament
12 June 2020 | Poem John Bolton. Photo Lydiane Mattio. Read time 1 min.
#UCTLockDownLetters is a new feature on the University of Cape Town (UCT) news site. Staff, students, parents of students: we want to hear about your experiences of work and life in lockdown. Emails, audio and video clips, prose and poetry are also very welcome. This is your space.
This contribution comes from Emeritus Professor John Bolton, a senior research scholar in the Department of Biological Sciences. He wrote this on the last day of lockdown level 4.
31 May 2020
Lockdown’s a miserable state
You sit and you wait, then you wait …
You feel such a loner
As you wait for Corona
To avoid it, now that would be great
It was once just a Mexican beer
Tasted awful, but nothing to fear
Corona’s a brand
That could have been banned
But beer was banned anyway, here
It’s not a good time to be male
Or old, or with parts that may fail
Blood vessel rigidity
Becomes co-morbidity
We all feel increasingly frail
I drag myself out of my bed
Early morning, a brisk walk instead
But all down the road
Gagged in facemasks they strode
Feels like I’m in ‘Shaun of the Dead’
We hope soon the last will be seen
Of murderous Covid-19
A year maybe, or two
Like the old Spanish flu
Corona will be a has-been
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UCT Lockdown Letters: Share your stories
In order to foster a sense of community during the COVID-19 lockdown, a new initiative – #UCTLockdownLetters – invites staff and students from across UCT to share your stories about life and survival at home.
How has the lockdown affected you and your ability to work or study? What does your study-from-home space look like? What adaptations have you made to working from home? How are you coping as partners, parents, children, siblings and individuals? How do you cope with stress? What will you do differently after the lockdown?
This is your space to express yourself in any medium you choose: in words, prose, poetry, audio, video or pictures. Your contributions will be curated as part of a special platform designed for sharing – and to create a unique archive for future UCT communities.
Please send your submissions to LockdownLetters@uct.ac.za.
Please remember to avoid including copyrighted material in your submissions. UCT reserves the right to review and select submitted content for publication on this feature page. Videos (in .mp4 format) and audio files (in .mp3 format) can be shared with the Newsroom through downloadable link services like WeTransfer or Google Drive, among others. If you are unsure about how to film yourself, please watch the video tutorial.
