Not Again, Fear Of The Other Poem by Chen-ou Liu

A Tanka Prose

The online version of the French newspaper, Le Courrier Picard, runs a Sunday headline reading "Nouveau Peril Jaune? " (New Yellow Peril?) , featuring a photo of an Asian woman wearing a face mask.

coronavirus...
I read through yellowing pages
of La Peste

Fear has a knack of getting its way; we would realize this if we were not confined within four walls of our needs and desires. Disguised as safety measures, fear of a pandemic has turned into a pandemic of fear... of the other.

Cattails, April,2020

Note: Albert Camus's 1947 novel, La Peste (The Plague) , tells