Love letter in a virus pandemic

This poem was written by Dr. Maria de Sousa, a professor at University of Porto and Adjunct Professor at Weill Cornell Medicine.

She wrote this poem to all her friends days before dying from the COVID virus. I think it is an amazing piece of work which needs to be read.

Dr. Sousa was co-corresponding author with Dr. David C. Lyden, Professor of Pediatrics at Weill Cornell Medicine, on a recent publication on brain metastasis (Goncalo Rodrigues, et al, Nature Cell Biology Nov 2019), and also a close friend of Dr. Rui Costa, Director of the Zuckerman Institute at Columbia University.

Dr. Lyden, who studies children’s cancer, expressed, “this poem is at the heart of the crisis. Gifted people, such as Maria, in our own Cornell community, must be remembered for all that they did for Cornell and the world at large.”

Love Letter in a virus pandemic

By Dr. Maria de Sousa

Bagpipes played in Scotland

Tenors sing from verandas in Italy

The dead will not hear them

And the living want to mourn their dead in silence

Who do they want to cheer?

The children?

But the children are also dying

In my circumstance

I may die

Wondering if I will ever see you again

But before I die

I want you to know

How much I care for you

How much I worry about you

How much I remember shared and cherished

moments

Moments then

Eternities now

Poetry

Laughter

The sea

sunsets

The feather that the gull took to our table

Breakfast

Golden cuff links

The magnolia

The hospital

Socks pijamas and other thoughtful things

All moment then

Eternities now

As I may die and you must live

In your living the hope of my lasting

Maria de Sousa

April 2020