A Forgotten Dirge

(note: This poem was written for my friends in the Plymouth Area Writers Workshop group, as an assigned piece based on research into the dread influenza epidemic of 1918. I'm interested in hearing from all who have heard about this plague which claimed upwards of 50 million lives.)

A Forgotten Dirge

That March of Eighteen, scarcely now recalled,

The fading chill of winter in the camps,

Unguessed mutations stalking through the ranks

Of men already drugged by war’s cruel trance…

And legions soon would fall like flies before

A silent foe who felled each gate and door.

In March of Eighteen, doctors here were few;

Like nurses, most had gone to tend the slain

Of Flanders Field and others far from home,

Their homes left nearly shieldless when he came:

The freak invader, sickle poised, to reap

One wave of victims with his breathless sleep.

The March of Eighteen cry sounds wide and clear

For volunteers to fly where needed most;

A mere trainee, my husband still in France,

I board the bus with others for the coast.

My Red Cross mask in place, I pay the fare,

For spring has come, and I must do my share.

This March of Eighteen: little do I know

How “three-day fever” will evolve and grow…

As troops deploy to Europe, the disease

Is quick to cross the cold, forbidding sea.

By summertime, the plague has ravaged Spain,

Thus, “Spanish flu” is now its traveling name.

O March of Eighteen! Funeral march indeed…

By fall a second wave has come to feed

Like locusts on the babes, the young, the hale,

While in our labs, we struggle to prevail.

For this tsunami hunts and slays at will—

A hungry swarm, an army primed to kill.

The March of Eighteen strides from shore to shore,

From pueblos west to igloos in the north.

The victims spewing red and turning blue,

The hospitals fill up and overflow…

And life expectancy drops twelve percent;

A twentieth die, but still it won’t relent.

Our March of Eighteen…could it soon be past?

November’s here—it’s Armistice at last!

War-weary soldiers home whom God has saved:

But from our glad embrace, comes one more Wave.

Not like the last, but direr than the first,

This wave of flu is, in its way, the worst.

This March of Eighteen trudges one year more,

Far less regarded than what came before…

We’re tired of the War…the death…the flu…

We’re eager to begin our lives anew.

So, with my man, I turn from death…to dreams,

Where no invader writes his bitter themes.

Now, March of Eighteen’s drum is scarcely heard;

Our children, grown who hear nary a word

Of the monster who left fifty millions dead.

We sang them myths and fairy tales instead.

Like monkey-evils, never said, heard, seen…

Praying never to recall March of Eighteen.

Mark N. Aikins

August 1, 2013