Over the time of this pandemic, we have heard numerous accounts of a spouse or a son and daughter, peering through a window as a loved one dies from Covid-19. When this plague was raging in the Chicago area, my grand nephew, Steven, was being born in a Chicago hospital at the same time many people on other floors were dying from Covid-19. This juxtaposition of death and birth is being played out in hospitals all over our nation, and all over the world.
After some tinkering with the words, I wrote this observational poem Juxtaposition 1 and last week composed music expressing this juxtaposition of sorrow and joy. I decided to use the old Johann Sebastian Bach form of “Prelude and Fugue”. The Prelude in a minor key, at a slow tempo expressing the grief of people witnessing the death of a loved one. The Fugue in a major key expressing the joy and wonder of people looking upon their newborn infant.
Here is the poem.
JUXTAPOSITION 1
Faces stricken,
painted in grief,
peer through the glass barrier
into the room,
as ventilators are removed
from loved ones, and
last breaths are expelled.
Faces, wonderstruck,
painted with excitement,
peer through the window glass,
into the nursery
as newborn infants are
laid in bassinettes, and,
the first of many breaths begin.
(c) 2020 by Robert Charles Wagner. All rights reserved
Here is the music.
