Two poems by Dorothy Pope

Published in The Spectator May 2020.

a great achievement

       Coronavirus Street

Only the early morning thief

quietly shovelling sand,

a midnight cheat

home from long drive,

med student and nurse

not volunteering

in the otherwise street

but the self-risked gifts

of food in the porch,

the faithful deliveries

of newspapers and fish

sustaining numbers

of phone calls, emails and post –

different play, same characters.

                 How Old

I am six and seventeen,

twenty-five and thirty-four,

and we all have to live

in this ugly, inconvenient house

but from upstairs,

you can see clear across

to Dartmoor

and the beaches beyond,

past the bomb damage

and the four old-fashioned schools.

In the foreground is the man

seated at his table in the window

reading the spread out

broadsheet version of The Times.