Richard Pamatatau
Richard Pamatatau is a tenured academic at AUT University and a former journalist who worked on The DominionPost, the influential morning paper in New Zealand's capital Wellington, the NZ Herald in Auckland and latterly at the public broadcaster Radio New Zealand. He is known as a political commentator and sometime columnist who has poked the borax at the left and the right. He holds a Master of Creative Writing with First Class Honours from Auckland University and is making a change from teaching journalism as he pursues a PhD at Massey University in poetry. In 2022 he will join AUT's School of Language and Culture and teach in the Creative Writing team. He loves the power of words and poetry in particular as a means to tell difficult stories, play with ideas as well as move hearts. In his poems, “COVID is like a pop song” and “Swabset,” Richard responds to the Covid-19 pandemic that complicate both the severity of the virus while trying to tell stories that capture the personal anxiety and lightness alongside the public fear and process.
Covid is like a pop song
There is neither notation nor orchestra
ready for this viral load
both soloist and chorus in a spiked ball.
It’s voice is clear as it uses each body it finds
to stage a show that will eventually if
left untreated bring the house down.
And the house next door and the house
next door and the house next door
as it’s unwitting audience grows.
Mask up you say and take the jab but
what about those who sing the song
where science remains outside the hall?
If Covid had a time signature would it be
quavers amok or hemi-demi-semi quavers
across a stave in life’s key of?
Is there a beat to a Covid malady that slips
through the body via nano-droplets on the air
to the lungs and beyond?
Will we sit and wait for the song’s resolution
letting it play on and out
or do we say the tune is without merit as we turn it off?
Swabset.
Scarcely an hour after the message
a Covid infected student was in the building,
we decided to get tested.
We thought we had beaten it,
loving freedom of association as a country
breathing together closely without fear.
But on the day before
everything changed. We watched the prime minister
as country-together being locked down.
Day two we listened to the radio as infections rose
learning about the R spread rate
and transmission numbers.
Numbers rose. Again.
Again, again, again.
And as a nation we gather at our radios,
Our internet feeds and live streams in thousands of places
fearing what’s next,
around the health corner.
We decide to get a swab,
via a probe of the nose.
Radio reports speak of eight hour waits
by masked citizens I cars riven with fear or viral load.
I call the practice my family has attended for 70 years.
In a moment booked in for that morning.
In the Mercedes we pass kilometres of traffic lined up.
Both directions masked up citizens waiting,
their fear visible as we glide past.
The move car length by car length ever so slowly.
My anxiety surfaces for a moment, tears well.
That we can glide by while others wait,
others with possibly more pressing needs and greater anxiety.
But the swabbing doctor says
You’ve done right to get tested.
Grateful we make our way home
blasting Frank Ocean.
Next the waiting,
the wait wait wait.
We join the nation for the one o’clock briefing.
Wait wait wait as numbers rise and rise.
Will I be one of the daily numbers,
and where I have scanned in be a place of interest?
Will I be an infected infector
like the student at the University?
My shopping at the organic supermarket shared with the nation
as a shop of shame?
My privileged purchases on show to the nation.
This spreader buys fancy cheese and deboned chook,
purple carrots and kale.
So we wait, afraid
of being a number.
One of those numbers.
A number means quarantine in a facility
where the food is not from the organic supermarket
no purple carrots and kale on the menu.
Where I will be monitored daily
and cited in a spreadsheet.
No one will be able to come near me so we wait.
And wait.
And wait.
Isolated as instructed and taking masked walks.
In those moments though
fear is real
and Covid does not care that I got a test quick
at the practice my family attended for 70 years.
And then,
just like that a text.
A positive negative.
I am a number for a spreadsheet
and the one o’clock briefing by the PM.
I’m one of the 67 thousand tests for
the good of the nation.
Not an R number needing quarantine.
I breathe and peel a purple carrot
to go ready to shop another day