It goes without saying that poetry isn’t designed for easy times.

Instead, it’s designed to sit with us through darkness, to echo our thoughts back at us, to show us we’re not alone.

None of the following poems shy away from violence, fear, or suffering. They approach it from different angles—sometimes through the prism of solitude (like A. R. Ammons’ meditative “Still,”), at other times refracted through music and cultural iconography (see “The Book of Yeezus” by Julian Randall, a poem that reads more like a primal scream). But each one looks unblinkingly at reality and, instead of denying it, shapes it into something more beautiful and more raw, and somehow closer to the actuality of the feelings and experiences that comprise being alive.

Today, many of us are facing a long stretch of unknowable changes from coronavirus. But as these poems remind us, humans have long been facing tremendous upheaval, staring disaster in the face and finding the song inside it—whether by choice or by some primal force that drives us to create in times of chaos. These poems show us that no one is alone in this, even though we’re all facing different choices and approaching them from the isolation of our rooms. Poetry can bind us all together, across time and space, and if there were ever a time for it (to share it, to write it, to lose yourself in it), that time is now.

Here are 15poems to read during the onset of the coronavirus in America.

1. For when you’re seeking hope: “Lockdown” by Brother Richard

Yes there is fear.

Yes there is isolation.

Yes there is panic buying.

Yes there is sickness.

Yes there is even death.

But,

They say that in Wuhan after so many years of noise

You can hear the birds again.

They say that after just a few weeks of quiet

The sky is no longer thick with fumes

But blue and grey and clear.

They say that in the streets of Assisi

People are singing to each other

across the empty squares,

keeping their windows open

so that those who are alone

may hear the sounds of family around them.

They say that a hotel in the West of Ireland

Is offering free meals and delivery to the housebound.

Today a young woman I know

is busy spreading fliers with her number

through the neighbourhood

So that the elders may have someone to call on.

Today Churches, Synagogues, Mosques and Temples

are preparing to welcome

and shelter the homeless, the sick, the weary

All over the world people are slowing down and reflecting

All over the world people are looking at their neighbours in a new way

All over the world people are waking up to a new reality

To how big we really are.

To how little control we really have.

To what really matters.

To Love.

So we pray and we remember that

Yes there is fear.

But there does not have to be hate.

Yes there is isolation.

But there does not have to be loneliness.

Yes there is panic buying.

But there does not have to be meanness.

Yes there is sickness.

But there does not have to be disease of the soul

Yes there is even death.

But there can always be a rebirth of love.

Wake to the choices you make as to how to live now.

Today, breathe.

Listen, behind the factory noises of your panic

The birds are singing again

The sky is clearing,

Spring is coming,

And we are always encompassed by Love.

Open the windows of your soul

And though you may not be able

to touch across the empty square,

Sing

2. For when dark thoughts come: “Divine” by Kim Addonizio

Oh hell, here’s that dark wood again.You thought you’d gotten through it –middle of your life, the ogre turned into a mousemonsters hammered downinto their caves, werewolves outrun.You’d come out of all that, into a field.There was one man standing in it.He held out his arms.Ping went your iHeartso you took off all your clothes.Now there were two of you,or maybe one mashed back togetherlike sandwich halves,oozing mayonnaise.You lived on grapes and antidepressantsand the occasional small marinated mammal.You watched the DVDs that droppedfrom the DVD tree. Nothingwas forbidden to you, so no worries there.It rained a lot.You planted some tomatoes.Something bad had to happenbecause no trouble, no story, soFuck you, fine, whatever,here come more black treeshung with sleeping batslike ugly Christmas ornaments.Don’t you hate the holidays?All that giving. All those wind-upcreches, those fake silver icicles.If you had a real one you could stabyour undead love through its bigcursed heart. Instead you have silver noodlewith which you must flay yourself.Denial of pleasure,death before death,alone in the woods with a few batsunfolding their creaky wings.

3. For when America fills you with rage and the powers that be are failing: “Dancing” by Robert Hass

The radio clicks on—it’s poor swollen America,Up already and busy selling the exhausting obligationOf happiness while intermittently debating whether or notA man who kills fifty people in five minutesWith an automatic weapon he has bought for the purposeIs mentally ill. Or a terrorist. Or if terroristsAre mentally ill. Because if killing large numbers of peopleWith sophisticated weapons is a sign of sickness—You might want to begin with fire, our early ancestorsDrawn to the warmth of it—from lightning,Must have been, the great booming flashes of itFrom the sky, the tree shriveled and sizzling,Must have been, an awful power, the odorOf ozone a god’s breath; or grass fires,The wind whipping them, the animals stampeding,Furious, driving hard on their haunches from the terrorOf it, so that to fashion some campfire of burning wood,Old logs, must have felt like feeding on the crumbsOf the god’s power and they would tell the storyOf Prometheus the thief, and the eagle that feastedOn his liver, told it around a campfire, must have been,And then—centuries, millennia—some tribeOf meticulous gatherers, some medicine woman,Or craftsman of metal discovered some sands that,Tossed into the fire, burned blue or flared green,So simple the children could do it, must have been,Or some soft stone rubbed to a powder that tossedInto the fire gave off a white phosphorescent glow.The word for chemistry from a Greek—some say Arabic—Stem associated with metal work. But it was in ChinaTwo thousand years ago that fireworks were invented—Fire and mineral in a confined space to produce power—They knew already about the power of fire and waterAnd the power of steam: 100 BC, Julius Caesar’s day.In Alexandria, a Greek mathematician producedA steam-powered turbine engine. Contain, explode.”The earliest depiction of a gunpowder weaponIs the illustration of a fire-lance on a mid-12th-centurySilk banner from Dunhuang.” Silk and the silk road.First Arab guns in the early fourteenth century. The EnglishUsed cannons and a siege gun at Calais in 1346.Cerigna, 1503: the first battle won by the power of riflesWhen Spanish “arquebusiers” cut down Swiss pikemenAnd French cavalry in a battle in southern Italy.(Explosions of blood and smoke, lead balls tearing openThe flesh of horses and young men, peasants mostly,Farm boys recruited to the armies of their feudal overlords.)How did guns come to North America? 2014,A headline: DIVERS DISCOVER THE SANTA MARIAOne of the ship’s Lombard cannons may have been stolenBy salvage pirates off the Haitian reef where it had sunk.And Cortes took Mexico with 600 men, 17 horses, 12 cannons.And LaSalle, 1679, constructed a seven-cannon barque,Le Griffon, and fired his cannons upon first entering the continent’sInterior. The sky darkened by the terror of the birds.In the dream time, they are still rising, swarming,Darkening the sky, the chorus of their cries sharpeningAs the echo of that first astounding explosion shimmersOn the waters, the crew blinking at the wind of their wings.Springfield Arsenal, 1777. Rock Island Arsenal, 1862.The original Henry rifle: a sixteen shot .44 caliber rimfireLever-action, breech-loading rifle patented—it was an ageOf tinkerers—by one Benjamin Tyler Henry in 1860,Just in time for the Civil War. Confederate casualtiesIn battle: about 95,000. Union casualties in battle:About 110,000. Contain, explode. They were throwingSand into the fire, a blue flare, an incandescent green.The Maxim machine gun, 1914, 400-600 small caliber roundsPer minute. The deaths in combat, all sides, 1914-1918Was 8,042,189. Someone was counting. Must have been.They could send things whistling into the air by boiling water.The children around the fire must have shrieked with delight1920: Iraq, the peoples of that place were “restive,”Under British rule and the young Winston ChurchillInvented the new policy of “aerial policing,” which amounted,Sources say, to bombing civilians and then pacifying themWith ground troops. Which led to the tactic of terrorizing civilianPopulations in World War II. Total casualties in that war,Worldwide: soldiers, 21 million; civilians, 27 million.They were throwing sand into the fire. The ancestor who stoleLightning from the sky had his guts eaten by an eagle.Spread-eagled on a rock, the great bird feasting.They are wondering if he is a terrorist or mentally ill.London, Dresden. Berlin. Hiroshima, Nagasaki.The casualties difficult to estimate. Hiroshima:66,000 dead, 70,000 injured. In a minute. Nagasaki:39,000 dead, 25,000 injured. There were more people killed,100,000, in more terrifying fashion in the firebombingOf Tokyo. Two arms races after the ashes settled.The other industrial countries couldn’t get thereFast enough. Contain, burn. One scramble wasFor the rocket that delivers the explosion that burns humansBy the tens of thousands and poisons the earth in the process.They were wondering if the terrorist was crazy. If he wasA terrorist, maybe he was just unhappy. The otherChallenge afterwards was how to construct machine gunsA man or a boy could carry: lightweight, compact, easy to assemble.First a Russian sergeant, a Kalashnikov, clever with gunsBuilt one on a German model. Now the heavy machine gun.The weapon of European imperialism through whichA few men trained in gunnery could slaughter native armiesIn Africa and India and the mountains of Afghanistan,Became “a portable weapon a child can operate.”The equalizer. So the undergunned Vietnamese insurgentsFought off the greatest army in the world. So the AfghansFought off the Soviet army using Kalashnikovs the CIAProvided to them. They were throwing powders in the fireAnd dancing. Children’s armies in Africa toting AK-47sThat fire thirty rounds a minute. A round is a bullet.An estimated 500 million firearms on the earth.100 million of them are Kalashnikov-style semi-automatics.They were dancing in Orlando, in a club. Spring night.Gay Pride. The relation of the total casualties to the historyOf the weapon that sent exploded metal into their bodies—30 rounds a minute, or 40, is a beautifully made instrument,And in America you can buy it anywhere—and into the historyOf the shaming culture that produced the idea of Gay Pride—They were mostly young men, they were dancing in a club,A spring night. The radio clicks on. Green fire. Blue fire.The immense flocks of terrified birds still risingIn wave after wave above the waters in the dream time.Crying out sharply. As the French ship breasted the vast interiorOf the new land. America. A radio clicks on. The Arabs,A commentator is saying, require a heavy hand. Dancing.

4. For when you’re scrolling through pictures of empty New York, remembering: “Meditations in an Emergency” by Frank O’Hara

Am I to become profligate as if I were a blonde? Or religious as if I were French? Each time my heart is broken it makes me feel more adventurous (and how the same names keep recurring on that interminable list!), but one of these days there’ll be nothing left with which to venture forth. Why should I share you? Why don’t you get rid of someone else for a change? I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love. Even trees understand me! Good heavens, I lie under them, too, don’t I? I’m just like a pile of leaves. However, I have never clogged myself with the praises of pastoral life, nor with nostalgia for an innocent past of perverted acts in pastures. No. One need never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes—I can’t even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there’s a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life. It is more important to affirm the least sincere; the clouds get enough attention as it is and even they continue to pass. Do they know what they’re missing? Uh huh. My eyes are vague blue, like the sky, and change all the time; they are indiscriminate but fleeting, entirely specific and disloyal, so that no one trusts me. I am always looking away. Or again at something after it has given me up. It makes me restless and that makes me unhappy, but I cannot keep them still. If only I had grey, green, black, brown, yellow eyes; I would stay at home and do something. It’s not that I am curious. On the contrary, I am bored but it’s my duty to be attentive, I am needed by things as the sky must be above the earth. And lately, so great has their anxiety become, I can spare myself little sleep. Now there is only one man I love to kiss when he is unshaven. Heterosexuality! you are inexorably approaching. (How discourage her?) St. Serapion, I wrap myself in the robes of your whiteness which is like midnight in Dostoevsky. How am I to become a legend, my dear? I’ve tried love, but that hides you in the bosom of another and I am always springing forth from it like the lotus—the ecstasy of always bursting forth! (but one must not be distracted by it!) or like a hyacinth, “to keep the filth of life away,” yes, there, even in the heart, where the filth is pumped in and courses and slanders and pollutes and determines. I will my will, though I may become famous for a mysterious vacancy in that department, that greenhouse. Destroy yourself, if you don’t know! It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so. I admire you, beloved, for the trap you’ve set. It’s like a final chapter no one reads because the plot is over. “Fanny Brown is run away—scampered off with a Cornet of Horse; I do love that little Minx, & hope She may be happy, tho’ She has vexed me by this Exploit a little too. —Poor silly Cecchina! or F:B: as we used to call her. —I wish She had a good Whipping and 10,000 pounds.” —Mrs. Thrale. I’ve got to get out of here. I choose a piece of shawl and my dirtiest suntans. I’ll be back, I’ll re-emerge, defeated, from the valley; you don’t want me to go where you go, so I go where you don’t want me to. It’s only afternoon, there’s a lot ahead. There won’t be any mail downstairs. Turning, I spit in the lock and the knob turns.

5. For when sorrow comes: “Grief” by Matthew Dickman

When grief comes to you as a purple gorillayou must count yourself lucky.You must offer her what’s leftof your dinner, the book you were trying to finishyou must put asideand make her a place to sit at the foot of your bed,her eyes moving from the clockto the television and back again.I am not afraid. She has been here beforeand now I can recognize her gaitas she approaches the house.Some nights, when I know she’s coming,I unlock the door, lie down on my back,and count her stepsfrom the street to the porch.Tonight she brings a pencil and a ream of paper,tells me to write downeveryone I have ever known,and we separate them between the living and the deadso she can pick each name at random.I play her favorite Willie Nelson albumbecause she misses Texasbut I don’t ask why.She hums a little,the way my brother does when he gardens.We sit for an hourwhile she tells me how unreasonable I’ve been,crying in the check-out line,refusing to eat, refusing to shower,all the smoking and all the drinking.Eventually she puts one of her heavypurple arms around me, leansher head against mine,and all of a sudden things are feeling romantic.So I tell her,things are feeling romantic.She pulls another name, this timefrom the dead,and turns to me in that way that parents doso you feel embarrassed or ashamed of something.Romantic? She says,reading the name out loud, slowlyso I am aware of each syllable, each vowelwrapping around the bones like new muscle,the sound of that person’s bodyand how reckless it is,how careless that his name is in one pile and not the other.

6. For when you find solace and catharsis in music: “The Book of Yeezus” by Julian Randall

An arrow does its own form of singing I like to believethis means nothing is ever too farfrom the bird that it was I tender the darkwith a hum we cannot die in a legionof spells for the Black boys who learnedto make the light sorry All I have ever wantedis to be the wound you neonAll I have ever wanted is to die beautifulin hands I could mistake for yoursAll seasons are becoming the seasonof my isolation The green sputters longinto December so I think we are all less investedin loyalty these days O you gilded Amistadthe mouth I’d forgive without question frothswith an armada of golden-hulled ships ExcessI too pretty the interruption when I cannot bearthe elegy any longer I don’t know how not to lovewhat would kill me without noticing I can beferocious with my ugly I can be the knife chantingsilver through the abrasion I wish I could writeof you as something that would break if I held itliving for too long O grief-cousin phantom-chainwind-throne blade-choir What is death to the childrenof the forgotten One day too my mother will dieand my loneliness will be a hyperbole of ravensall of which will sing like fugitives Glory Gloryhow much I’ll miss her While yours anthem in the wrongdirection I will probably still love you then Glory Gloryhow easy I march in defense of another man who wants me dead

7. For when your dreams turn apocalyptic: “Prayer for the Mutilated World” by sam sax

what will be left after the last fidgetspinner’s spun its last spin

after the billboards accrue their thicklayer of grit masking advertisementsfor teeth paste & tanqueray gin

after the highways are overtakenby invasive forests

after the ministers give up their gods& the rabbis their congregationsfor drink

after new men rise to lead us sheeptoward our shearing, to make bedsheets from our hair

after the high towers have no airplanesto warn away & instead blink purelytoward heaven like childrenwith one red eye

after phone lines do nothingbut cut the sky into sheet music& our phones are just expensivebricks of metal & glass

after our cloud of photographs collapses& all memories retreat backinto their privatized skulls

after the water taps gasp out their finalblessingwhat then?

when even the local militias runout of ammunitions

when the blast radii have beenchalked & the missiles do all they werebuilt to

when us jews have given up our statefor that much older country of walking& then that even older religion of dirt

when all have succumbed to illnessinside the church of our gutted pharmacies

when the seas eat their cities

when the ground splits like a dress

when the trash continent in the mid-atlanticat last opens its mouth to spit

what will be left after we’ve left

i dare not consider it

instead dance with me a momentlate in this last extinction

that you are reading thismust be enough

8. For when you want to find peace: “Love Sorrow” by Mary Oliver

Love sorrow. She is yours now, and you musttake care of what has beengiven. Brush her hair, help herinto her little coat, hold her hand, especially when crossing a street. For, think,

what if you should lose her? Then you would besorrow yourself; her drawn face, her sleeplessnesswould be yours. Take care, touchher forehead that she feel herself not so

utterly alone. And smile, that she does notaltogether forget the world before the lesson. Have patience in abundance. And do notever lie or ever leave her even for a moment

by herself, which is to say, possibly, again, abandoned. She is strange, mute, difficult, sometimes unmanageable but, remember, she is a child. And amazing things can happen. And you may see,

as the two of you gowalking together in the morning light, howlittle by little she relaxes; she looks about her; she begins to grow.

9. For when you’re inspired to create: “Poet” by Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs

For Roberto Tijerina

After Audre Lorde’s “Thanks to Jesse Jackson”

say it like bridgespell it like splinter

these are the timeswhen words need carpentersthink out loud reshapinginto places to sit and meetand walk and not fall through

write it like ricegrowing hot and irresistibleundercover in the watched pot of revolutionspell it like cauldron

these are the yearswhen we eat our wordswhen the boil-over of desireis the table we build by sharing

train our tongues to be transsend ground tap rhythm of meaninggenerate light like a helmetin the mineslike a tread in the sloopin the loop down of question

this is it

the time when each wordwake tonguecatch fire to earclean throat back to pinkwhen each wordsear like prophecy on our hearts

this is the momentwe all becomepoets.

10. For when you’re envisioning the future: “Sci-Fi” by Tracy K. Smith

There will be no edges, but curves.Clean lines pointing only forward.

History, with its hard spine & dog-earedCorners, will be replaced with nuance,

Just like the dinosaurs gave wayTo mounds and mounds of ice.

Women will still be women, butThe distinction will be empty. Sex,

Having outlived every threat, will gratifyOnly the mind, which is where it will exist.

For kicks, we’ll dance for ourselvesBefore mirrors studded with golden bulbs.

The oldest among us will recognize that glow—But the word sun will have been re-assigned

To the Standard Uranium-Neutralizing deviceFound in households and nursing homes.

And yes, we’ll live to be much older, thanksTo popular consensus. Weightless, unhinged,

Eons from even our own moon, we’ll driftIn the haze of space, which will be, once

And for all, scrutable and safe.

11. For when the future comes, and it looks familiar: “An Old Story” (also by Tracy K. Smith)

We were made to understand it would beTerrible. Every small want, every niggling urge,Every hate swollen to a kind of epic wind. Livid, the land, and ravaged, like a rageful Dream. The worst in us having taken over And broken the rest utterly down. A long age Passed. When at last we knew how little Would survive us—how little we had mended Or built that was not now lost—something Large and old awoke. And then our singing Brought on a different manner of weather. Then animals long believed gone crept down From trees. We took new stock of one another. We wept to be reminded of such color.

12. For when you are relishing stillness: “Still” by A. R. Ammons

I said I will find what is lowlyand put the roots of my identitydown there:each day I’ll wake upand find the lowly nearby,a handy focus and reminder,a ready measure of my significance,the voice by which I would be heard,the wills, the kinds of selfishnessI couldfreely adopt as my own:

but though I have looked everywhere,I can find nothingto give myself to:everything is

magnificent with existence, is insurfeit of glory:nothing is diminished,nothing has been diminished for me:

I said what is more lowly than the grass:ah, underneath,a ground-crust of dry-burnt moss:I looked at it closelyand said this can be my habitat: butnestling in Ifoundbelow the brown exteriorgreen mechanisms beyond the intellectawaiting resurrection in rain: so I got up

and ran saying there is nothing lowly in the universe:I found a beggar:he had stumps for legs: nobody was payinghim any attention: everybody went on by:I nestled in and found his life:there, love shook his body like a devastation:I saidthough I have looked everywhereI can find nothing lowlyin the universe:

I whirled though transfigurations up and down,transfigurations of size and shape and place:

at one sudden point came still,stood in wonder:moss, beggar, weed, tick, pine, self, magnificentwith being!

13. For when you turn off the noise and listen: “The Word of the Silence” by Aurobindo

A bare impersonal hush is now my mind,A world of sight clear and inimitable,A volume of silence by a Godhead signed,A greatness pure, virgin of will.Once on its pages Ignorance could writeIn a scribble of intellect the blind guess of TimeAnd cast gleam-messages of ephemeral light,A food for souls that wander on Nature’s rim.But now I listen to a greater WordBorn from the mute unseen omniscient Ray:The Voice that only Silence’s ear has heardLeaps missioned from an eternal glory of Day.All turns from a wideness and unbroken peaceTo a tumult of joy in a sea of wide release.

14. For when you’re seeking redemption in the isolation: “It is the pang of separation that spreads throughout the world (from Gitanjali), by Rabindranath Tagore

It is the pang of separation that spreads throughout the world and gives birth to shapes innumerable in the infinite sky. It is this sorrow of separation that gazes in silence all night from star to star and becomes lyric among rustling leaves in rainy darkness of July. It is this overspreading pain that deepens into loves and desires, into sufferings and joys in human homes; and this it is that ever melts and flows in songs through my poet’s heart.

15. For when you are healing: “A Map to the Next World” by Joy Harjo

for Desiray Kierra Chee

In the last days of the fourth world I wished to make a map forthose who would climb through the hole in the sky.

My only tools were the desires of humans as they emergedfrom the killing fields, from the bedrooms and the kitchens.

For the soul is a wanderer with many hands and feet.

The map must be of sand and can’t be read by ordinary light. Itmust carry fire to the next tribal town, for renewal of spirit.

In the legend are instructions on the language of the land, how itwas we forgot to acknowledge the gift, as if we were not in it or of it.

Take note of the proliferation of supermarkets and malls, thealtars of money. They best describe the detour from grace.

Keep track of the errors of our forgetfulness; the fog steals ourchildren while we sleep.

Flowers of rage spring up in the depression. Monsters are bornthere of nuclear anger.

Trees of ashes wave good-bye to good-bye and the map appears todisappear.

We no longer know the names of the birds here, how to speak tothem by their personal names.

Once we knew everything in this lush promise.

What I am telling you is real and is printed in a warning on themap. Our forgetfulness stalks us, walks the earth behind us, leav-ing a trail of paper diapers, needles, and wasted blood.

An imperfect map will have to do, little one.

The place of entry is the sea of your mother’s blood, your father’ssmall death as he longs to know himself in another.

There is no exit.

The map can be interpreted through the wall of the intestine—aspiral on the road of knowledge.

You will travel through the membrane of death, smell cookingfrom the encampment where our relatives make a feast of freshdeer meat and corn soup, in the Milky Way.

They have never left us; we abandoned them for science.

And when you take your next breath as we enter the fifth worldthere will be no X, no guidebook with words you can carry.

You will have to navigate by your mother’s voice, renew the songshe is singing.

Fresh courage glimmers from planets.

And lights the map printed with the blood of history, a map youwill have to know by your intention, by the language of suns.

When you emerge note the tracks of the monster slayers where theyentered the cities of artificial light and killed what was killing us.

You will see red cliffs. They are the heart, contain the ladder.

A white deer will greet you when the last human climbs from thedestruction.

Remember the hole of shame marking the act of abandoning ourtribal grounds.

We were never perfect.

Yet, the journey we make together is perfect on this earth who wasonce a star and made the same mistakes as humans.

We might make them again, she said.

Crucial to finding the way is this: there is no beginning or end.

You must make your own map.

Read more poems on resilience.