Every Day is Sunday Now
1: January
Images of Wuhan’s empty streets on the evening TV news: health and street sanitation personnel covered head to toe in protective garb; 13 million people under quarantine in that Chinese city — remotely concerning news I’d thought, until, quite unexpectedly, the fact of our global interconnectedness was brought home to me.
First week of spring semester, seated at my office desk at the university, preparing my class, my office mate, an ESL instructor at least thirty years my junior, asked innocently enough, “There haven’t been any reported coronavirus cases in Boston, right?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“One of my students emailed yesterday, informing me he thought he had the flu. Do you think I should be concerned?”
He elaborated: this student is enrolled in his class made up entirely of International Chinese students. It’s not a large class, but the room is small and uncomfortably crowded. Over winter break, many of them had traveled home to China for the Lunar New Year, and are just now returning to campus for the start of the new semester.
“The student stressed he wasn’t from Wuhan province, but from north of Beijing,” my office mate added, as if to reassure himself. “I told him to go to the campus infirmary to get checked out.”
“Good. Let’s hope he followed your advice.”
We turned back to our tasks, but then he interrupted: “You know, I didn't sleep well last night after receiving that email. I’ve been feeling under the weather lately myself.”
I tried to console him: “There are only 6,000 cases world-wide reported as of this morning, and only a handful in the US. The Times also reported the COVID-19 infection rate is comparable to the SARS virus, which was quickly contained; ten times lower than the measles rate.”
After another pause, my office mate asked, "But don't you think there will be confirmed cases here soon? The population of International students from China on Boston campuses numbers in the thousands, most just returning from visits home to China."
I had to admit that it was likely given the large number studying at the many colleges and universities in this city, including our campus.
"I understand,” he added, “that people can be infected long before they become symptomatic.”
“That's true,” I acknowledged. “I read from two days to two weeks or more, but there’s a lot still unknown about this virus strain.”
We each left for our respective classes, but I carried this thought with me as I walked across campus: "We two share a windowless, poorly ventilated, overheated office. We sit at most eight feet apart, grading papers, planning classes, eating lunch at our desks, and meeting with students in this confined space.”
Later we both returned to the office. I checked online for updates and shared this news: The number of infections had risen to well over 7,000 with 175 deaths, up from about 150 since the morning reports. The WHO had now declared a world pandemic. To reassure us both, I tried to put this news in perspective, “I read there have been 8,000 deaths just due to the common cold in the US already this year.”
Winter coat on, I gathered my papers up, slung my backpack over my shoulder, and said goodbye: “See you next week.”
Riding the campus shuttle bus to the T-station, I had two thoughts: “Wuhan doesn’t feel quite so remote anymore,” and “I have gained an intimate understanding of how easily panic can spread.” Seated on the subway train headed home, I opened my well-thumbed copy of W. H. Auden’s poems, where I came across this one:
Gare du Midi
A nondescript express in from the South,
Crowds round the ticket barrier, a face
To welcome which the mayor has not contrived
Bugles or braid: something about the mouth
Distracts the stray look with alarm and pity.
Snow is falling, Clutching a little case,
He walks out briskly to infect a city
Whose terrible future may have just arrived.
Six weeks later, with COVID infections spiking locally, our governor mandated a state-wide lockdown, citing the need to “flatten the curve” — a newly coined pandemic buzzword; and my campus moved online for the remainder of the semester.
2: May
Lockdown Diary
“Getting great reviews, finally, for how well we are handling the pandemic.”
—POTUS Tweet
City park at lunchtime, empty:
a bench in shade taped caution-yellow—
one man, sneakers unlaced,
asleep on it.
*
Across post office lobby floor:
line of stenciled shoe prints—
each matching yellow pair separated
from the next: giant-steps.
*
Window shades pulled, curtains closed,
yard overgrown: dandelions and crabgrass,
on front walk leading to street
a blue surgical mask: discarded.
*
Drawn blinds, pulled down grates,
shuttered banks, bookstores, shops,
cafe chairs on outdoor tables:
chained, locked.
*
Swing sets gathered,
chained, locked;
jungle-gym, teeter-totter, slide
all swathed in yellow tape: “Caution.”
*
Protest poster:
GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME COVID-19
*
Trees budding if not already leafed,
warbler migration near spring peak—
outside cemetery’s barred gate:
one lone birder, field-glasses raised.
*
Avenue where commuters once
idled in rush-hour traffic:
shirtless joggers, bike riders in tank-tops,
in-line skaters: colorful bandana face-coverings.
*
Fashion statements:
bearded mountain men,
gray hair tied back in ponytails;
women: parted dark hair, skunk-striped.
*
Riverside path detritus:
cigarette butts, empty vodka nips,
crushed plastic water bottle,
used condom, surgical glove: torn.
*
Along the bank: geese and goslings, foraging,
gliding downstream: two pairs of swans,
strolling the path: a masked couple,
gloved hand in gloved hand.
*
Protest poster:
JESUS IS MY VACCINE
*
City square: all but vacant, no cops patrolling,
panhandlers, lacking clients,
congregate on Unitarian Church steps,
handing a bottle around—Hobo Jamboree!
*
Drive-up communicant, head tilted back
out open window, eyelids lowered, receiving
sacrament from a priest:
gloved, white coveralls head to toe.
*
Solemnly climbing church steps,
golden retriever in the lead,
two women and a man—all dressed in black:
bearing polished metal urn.
*
Protest poster:
I WANT A HAIRCUT.
3: September
Confined mostly to our home and backyard during the lockdown, my wife Mary and I share a joke about it. “Is today Thursday or Friday?” she’ll ask. And, although it really is Thursday, I reply: “It’s Sunday. Every day is Sunday now.” She laughs. Time has slowed to such a crawl, today no different than yesterday or tomorrow, the joke doesn’t get stale.
Since my one university class ended this spring, there is no longer any structure to my days. We both read, write, talk to friends via cell phone or video chat, take long walks, and, since every day feels like it’s the weekend, we also go for “Sunday” drives through the deserted city or in the countryside just to get out of the house.
When I answer her with, “Every day is Sunday now,” Mary gets the reference; it’s a line from a poem by our dear departed long-time neighbor and friend Ron Schreiber. Ron was a founding editor of Hanging Loose Press, which I later joined as a co-editor — forty years ago now! A poet and gay activist, he taught English at Boston’s only public university. It’s where I still teach my one post-retirement course.
Ron’s lover John contracted AIDS during the 1980s epidemic. He nursed him at home until he died. Ron’s last poetry collection is a poetic diary of that harrowing year, appropriately titled John. But “Every day is Sunday now,” is a line of Ron’s from a poem in a different collection. “January 1978,” the poem’s title, refers to Boston’s Great Blizzard of that year which stranded thousands of commuting motorists and shut the city down for almost two weeks. When it was published in 1984, the AIDS pandemic was nearing its peak of twenty-five million dead, which accounts for Ron’s apocalyptic vision. Here’s the poem in full:
January 1978
every day is Sunday, now.
Monday it snowed &
Tuesday everything stopped.
the trains stopped, the buses stopped, the
factories stopped, the hospitals almost
stopped & every day for a whole week
there was no traffic & people walked in the streets.
today is Saturday & the traffic is stopped.
tomorrow will really be Sunday.
the next day will be Monday &
it will snow again, &
just like last week it will snow again
all day Tuesday & everything will stop.
only this time there will be no place to put the snow.
this is the second winter of the apocalypse.
last winter was very cold.
this winter there will be more snow than ever.
Tom’s mother said there is all this snow in Boston
because Tom is queer, but last winter
the orange crop froze in Florida.
& it snowed in Albany where Tom’s mother called from.
& it will snow again Monday & Tuesday
& break record after record.
some people will say it snows because we are queer.
others will say it snows because the northeast
is a decadent part of the country.
but it is really snowing because
this is the second winter of the apocalypse,
which is coming in ice & cold.
this winter there are mudslides in California.
last winter there was drought.
& next winter the earth will open over the
San Andreas fault like it has opened in Turkey
& Guatemala City. the apocalypse
is not one gigantic tragedy.
it comes a winter at a time.
then a summer at a time & people don’t say
—oh the world is ending. they blame the snowfall
on the queers, who are suddenly everywhere,
dancing on the rim of the earth,
making love while the sun still shines.
I’m writing this during a different epidemic, which has already taken more than 200,000 Americans lives, more than one million world-wide, with no end to it in sight. The evening sky over Boston is tinged an eerie red at sunset from smoke haze, originating in the devastating wildfires in California, Oregon, and Washington State, which has drifted across the continent. Major cities on the west coast have the dubious distinction of registering the worst air-quality on earth. Meanwhile, yet another devastating hurricane is lashing the Gulf Coast. Meanwhile, the lives of black men and women continue to be lost to police violence despite widespread Black Lives Matter protests. Meanwhile, armed White Supremacist militias threaten insurrection. It certainly feels like the apocalypse, and Ron’s prescient poem resonates strongly today.
3: October
Mary and I lived around the corner from Ron and John in an apartment on a busy avenue in North Cambridge until our early forties when we bought our first and only home, a modest two-family across town in West Cambridge. The downstairs rental unit made it just barely affordable. When I announced our purchase to my Hanging Loose coeditors, the first question they asked was, “Does it have a dry basement?” Ron’s basement was lined, floor to ceiling, with shelves holding boxes of Hanging Loose poetry titles. It was the same at the other two editors’ homes. Ron’s basement also served as the fulfillment center for book and magazine orders.
In those days, before digital printing and print-on-demand, books were printed offset. Small press publishers like Hanging Loose couldn’t afford short runs of new titles, the unit price was too high. Typical print runs were 1,000 copies. We prided ourselves in keeping titles in print, but that boast had its downside as our basements became more and more cluttered with back titles. Poetry notoriously sells poorly compared to novels and cookbooks; second editions are rare. When Ron died, we moved most of his basement stock to a warehouse in New Jersey, but some of those books ended up in my basement, as did overstock of Hanging Loose Magazine issues dating as far back as 1966. Adding new titles each year since, my basement today is a replica of Ron’s: floor to ceiling shelves stuffed with boxes, others stacked one atop another on the floor.
I’ve recently begun to use COVID “Sunday” downtimes to descend the stairs to my basement. There I drag out boxes thick with dust, unopened since we moved in, and discard them, one or two per week. It pains me to do this, each title is like an old friend I’m compelled to abandon, but no library, school, or prison wants donations of a full box of Jack Anderson’s The Clouds of that Country, circa 1982. Believe me, I’ve tried to find a home for them: one or two copies, maybe, but a hundred? No thanks!
Down in my basement, sneezing from the dust, I open each box, and before hauling the contents to the recycling bin I save ten copies in the vain hope that one day there will be renewed interest. One copy I always bring upstairs and reread, cover to cover, with more than just nostalgic pleasure. Regardless of the author or title, I find the poems hold up quite well.
Jack Anderson’s clever, wry, sometimes camp, sometimes surreal poems, and especially his prose poems, are widely admired. Any anthology of late 20th Century prose poetry that doesn’t include one of his isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. Until his retirement he was also known as one of two principal dance critics for the New York Times. And Jack authored or coauthored (in collaboration with his spouse) numerous books on ballet: Dance New York, The Nutcracker, The One and Only: The Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, and Ballet & Modern Dance: A Concise History, among others.
Yesterday, I opened yet another dusty box of Jack’s poetry, Field Trips on the Rapid Transit, from 1992. Scrolling down its table of contents, there it was — the other poem that left a lasting impression on both Mary and me, and which has come up in our recent conversations. Although very different from Ron’s poem, it, too, has resonated during this strange dreamtime when our normal lives have been suspended indefinitely:
Retirement
For the longest time
they didn’t quite know what to do with their time
until they discovered they liked to make every day
a Sunday drive for a Sunday dinner.
They’d worked hard all their lives for this, they thought,
they’d gone through so much – so why not?
They’d take off in their car
scouting out restaurants
with names like the Bobolink,
the Jolly Fisherman, the Fox and Hounds.
They got to know
almost every nice restaurant around;
They seemed to know
every good place in their part of the state.
And it wasn’t just restaurants:
they learned about church suppers, Kiwanis Club cookouts,
and Legion Post fish fries.
They knew where to eat everywhere.
They’d put the question over breakfast:
“Where shall it be tonight?”
and spend the rest of the morning and all afternoon
making a list.
“Shall we stay here in town or go out in the country?
Is this a good night for the Swiss Chalet?
Or why not try
the Nahomac Gardens on Lake Nahomac
or the Golden Lion up in the hills?
And when’s First Methodist’s pancake feast?
They’d drive into the night
in summer with the windows open,
in winter with the heater on.
They liked the side roads best: you sometimes found
Daughters of Norway smorgasbords in little Lutheran churches
or rustic places in remodeled farmhouses
—the Spinning Wheel, the Weathervane, the White Turkey Inn—
or restaurants that still served family-style.
They’d have one drink before dinner.
Lots of coffee after
and always desert.
Sometimes, if they happened to be in a small town,
they’d walk along Main Street and window-shop,
comparing prices there with prices in the city,
then they’d drive back home,
maybe this time by another road:
by the lake road, maybe, a pretty road,
with the resort lights blinking
and shining on the water.
The Lord was good to them, they thought.
And this went on for many years
until they almost forgot
just what it was they used to do
before they’d found the Wishing Well,
the China Cupboard, and the Ship Ahoy.
This was their life now, they had time for themselves
to do what they wanted,
to do what they loved.
These days, Mary and I can often be found coasting along some country two-lane on a “Sunday” drive. Passing Legion Posts with their curtains drawn and parking lots empty, or small roadside eateries with prominent CLOSED signs hanging on the door, she’ll turn to me and say, “This pandemic is turning us into that couple in the Jack Anderson poem.” She knows I know the one she’s speaking about. These “Sunday” drives any day of the week have become our life, now and for the foreseeable future. I’ve almost forgotten what daily life was like just eight months ago.
4: December
Today is Monday, and my fall 2020 semester has come to an end. So has the structure it has given my life for the past fourteen weeks. Stuck at home, with little social interaction, Covid infections surging again and new lockdowns imminent, the pandemic dreamtime, like an obscuring fog of sameness, will soon envelop me again. Now every day will be Sunday again.
Today, Monday, is one week shy of the winter solstice. Thankfully this annus horribilis will shortly come to an end. The Electoral College has just certified Joseph Biden as our 46th president-elect, and a few days ago SCOTUS denied Trump’s last legal challenge to the 2020 election. Barring his declaration of martial law, attempting a military coup, a new administration will take up residence in the White House in just five weeks. The daily reality-television nightmare of the past four years has begun to loosen its vice-grip on my waking thoughts and imagination. I should feel hopeful.
The American Dialect Society meanwhile has included Beforetime in its shortlist of nominees for Word of the Year; its corollary would be Nowtime. Covid statistics have now reached grim new milestones: more deaths in a single day than on 9/11; more total deaths than all the American military casualties in World War II. War is the metaphor Trump has repeatedly invoked to describe his “fight” to quell the pandemic; but the verdict is clear: this “war” was lost through his lack of leadership and his administration’s incompetence.
My thoughts about the Aftertime, 2021 and beyond, are a combination of cynicism leavened with grains of hope. Efficacious Covid vaccines are becoming available; meanwhile, the hands of the environmental doomsday clock tick inexorably toward midnight. In this season of darkness, I’ve begun reading Ezra Pound’s Hugh Selwyn Mauberley Poems again, written after the bloody slaughter that was World War I:
All men, in law, are equals.
Free of Pisistratus,
We choose a knave or an eunuch
To rule over us.
The holidays approach, but Black men continue to die from Police violence. Meanwhile, state election officials in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina have received death threats for upholding legitimate vote counts and Republican strategists are taking aim to eliminate mail-in ballots in elections to come. Meanwhile, The Proud Boys, our native Black Shirts, emboldened by Trump’s advocacy and demagoguery, continue to threaten insurrection. Right-wing extremism isn’t an anomaly but a symptom of our flawed democracy. When one of our two major political parties refuses to legitimize any election it loses, I ask myself whether Pound’s metaphor in another poem he penned during that same dark time a century ago will prove a fitting description for our country’s future: “a bitch gone in the teeth.”
Mark Pawlak is the author of nine poetry collections and the editor of six anthologies. His latest book is Reconnaissance: New and Selected Poems and Poetic Journals (Hanging Loose). His work has been translated into German, Japanese, Spanish, and Polish. My Deniversity: Knowing Denise Levertov, a memoir, is forthcoming in 2021 from MadHat Press.