A Sonnet Written By A Person Dying Of Cholera In 19th Century London

By Civ Clegg

There’s an invisible nuisance making the rounds,
You can hear it the awful retching sounds,
Smell it on the lips made a blue grey quake,
Feel it in the dry, rough wheeze it makes,
Hate it in the death count, long since lost,
Paid for with a much too great a cost,
Moving through the air a pollutant prowl,
Death hangs on a breath, in this place so foul
Yet, those fondly attached to a certain craft,
To a tasty tipple, of a distinguished draft,
Does this sneak not creep, for to wreak its crime,
For in a mead’s no steed on which to hitch a ride.
See death dwells in the water, not the air,
Tis’ why, I peer outward, from a corpses stare.

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