(With apologies to Edgar Allan Poe)
Once upon a workday dreary, while I pondered, weak
and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of coronavirus rules—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping my home-office door—
“ ’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping my home-office door—
Only this and nothing more.”
Ah,
distinctly I recall the trick, a year that brought a dark pandemic;
And each separate piece of news wrought a groan and subsequent blues.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books an ease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost rapport
of unmasked colleagues closely huddled, laughing through the corridor —
Lost this year forevermore.
And the quiet breeze felt blowing, pages on my
desk were going,
Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
“ ’Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my office door—
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my office door;—
This it is and nothing more.”
Back to my work tasks turning, all my soul within
me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping something louder than before.
“Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window tapping;
Let me see, then, what is rapping, and this mystery explore—
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;—
’Tis the wind and nothing more!”
Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a
flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;
No acknowledgement was made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with air of lord or lady, perched upon my monitor—
Perched upon a web linked camera, just above my monitor—
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
Now the Raven set to charming my sad countenance to
smiling,
Straight I wheeled my office chair in front of bird, and monitor;
Then, reflecting on some inkling, I verbalized my thinking
Would coronavirus once again make us shut our office doors—
Tell me grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
What, sayest thou, is COVID’s score?
“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us—by that God we both adore—
Tell this soul with sorrow and frown, if this virus will again shut down,
The happy offices and hallways of beloved Sain Associates—
Separating working comrades of beloved Sain Associates.
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
“Be that word our sign of
parting, bird or fiend!” I whooped, upstarting—
“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!
Take thy hopeful message with thee, may it be no lie you’ve spoken!
Leave my happiness unbroken!—take flight from my monitor!
Take thy beak and blackened wings, and fly forth from my office door!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”