Quoth the poet
All need some kind of ventilator
Bread and circuses in the age of the tyrants
Smoky rituals and vendettas in the dark age
Therapeutic interventions in the age of medicos
And perennial psychotropic anesthesia

Rest and relaxation enjoyed a vogue
And lots of couches remain fully occupied
But the puritan abhorrence of sloth reasserts itself
And has made its compromise with unproductive work
Justification by 10k runs and fitness machines and jumping jacks
Good old mortification of the flesh

The dreamy sensitives among us
Invoke the grass the trees the singing birds
Mountains oceans sunsets and songs
The monumental network of chemical relations
The truth of imagination the beauty of forms
The holy communion of family and friends

Presumably a ventilator works in two directions
Inhaling and exhaling both
Drawing in the good and exhausting the bad
But our broiling planet already replete with toxins
Can accommodate no further fumes
And the interior ecosystem’s all backed up