Get the Jab

Jab jab jab get the jab: This fine church-going man across from me Tells of grace anew in the communion Of serum: ah, to puncture himself with The juices of the new tech, to suck down The ichor of our new cellular gods: Moderna, Pfizer, Johnson and Johnson, They’re all fine with him, he says. “Man, I don’t really care which, As long as I can *travel*.” Get the certificate, get the passport, Get the permissions, get the commissions— Get the jab, man—and get on a plane, Greece, he thinks—or India—it’s all the same. His cheeks are ruddy and smiling, Pressurized, almost, with relief As he prophesys of faraway lands And the magic new scanners That there will await him, await us all; And is this *not* prophecy, a new way For a new mankind? Yet, as he sits there He seems only half prophet, half instead Like the canary that twitters brightly At the promise of a few minutes out of its cage— Freedom tomorrow—*always tomorrow*! Church ladies listen intently, Church ladies lean closer; This new Gospel of medical absolution Captivates whatever’s left un-mortgaged In their souls—yes, you feel it in them, Some secret part they barely knew they had Thrills as our man tells of a perfect world Of documents and special access, Of new laws and customs, All built on testing and profiling, A world bright and shiny, custom-moulded For new virtues—and new enforcers. Safety, *sanctity*— Track and confirm. In a rising arc of enthusiasm Our twittering prophet tells About the clever new barcodes: You’ll get one, I’ll get one, see, We’ll all be scanned, like *one, two, three* Wherever we go. Arrive, depart, Scan here, scan there—like parcels Of human perishables: First, second, third day delivery, Bulk-rate, top-rate, sent by air or sea, Jab, track and confirm. What plan could be easier? What destiny, more free? At last with the number you’ll never have to doubt Who you are, nor where. Nor what You are *guilty* of—for we now are taught Infection sends its tentacles far beyond The genetic, the bacterial, the immune. It reaches, in fact, into the *moral*: the blight Of disagreeing, doubting. Nothing, they agree, Is more liberating than convenience, Except convenience with *certainty*; So salvation is here, friends: *get the jab*. My own life’s whole appreciation Has been for science, or so I thought— For that hard yet just seeker’s vision That pierces to the quiet heart of things, Espies their secret life, extends a hand And brings, in a blink, awakening to new worlds— This, I thought, was Science, the very spirit. Yet here and now, I cannot think But that some car on the train of progress Has jumped the track, with all this fluttering New love of an unknown servility: And Science, for all his gifts, (And long though I have walked Stride by stride in his footfalls, Finding treasures, I thought, in his merest Boot-print) now seems to have abandoned These parts, for the new revelation. Or else, if Science this be, he meets me with A strange new face, and a tongue I never knew, Sows dreams I never dreamed. In fact, at this table, where the feast is thrown In the hero’s honor—science suprema, *empiricus rex*, Savior of worlds—I do not see a single face I know. It seems to me they dream of a perfect cage Of barcodes, secrets without and within: They reach out, smiling, from the cage, Beseeching the needle’s new ecstasy, Eyes besotted by the strange new prophecy, Chirping out to receive the numbered tattoo Of their strange new liberation, Already warmly anticipating The heavy iron tingle that settles Under the skin long after The kiss of promised immunity— Almost as if somehow, in time, This feeling Would blister into Love.