Corona, Corona Updated by Readers

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With apologies to Bo Carter, Big Joe Turner, and Roger McGrath, my first few crude verses.

Corona Corona,

You’ve hung around too long

I won't get no lovin

Till you be gone.

I went down to the market,

To buy Maddog for my squeeze.

They wouldn't take no money,

'cause cash can spread disease.

I thought we’d order dinner,

Walked to my favorite spot.

All that’s open is a drive-through

For the car I haven’t got.

That's why my baby’s left me,

Gone home to join her ma.

Says I owe her money

She’s gonna call the law.

I heard there was a party,

The booze was gonna flow.

By the time I got there,

The sign was on the door:

“Until further notice

We condemn this property

This party is all over

Until 2053.”

 

Jean Heise sends in this verse:

Corona, Corona
You cause us such dread!
We can’t find the TP
And their ain’t no more bread.

Bob Geraci offers this consolation:

Corona virus bonus: misanthropes get extra credit for being antisocial

 

 

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Thomas Fleming

Thomas Fleming is president of the Fleming Foundation. He is the author of six books, including The Morality of Everyday Life and The Politics of Human Nature, as well as many articles and columns for newspapers, magazines,and learned journals. He holds a Ph.D. in Classics from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and a B.A. in Greek from the College of Charleston. He served as editor of Chronicles: a Magazine of American Culture from 1984 to 2015 and president of The Rockford Institute from 1997-2014. In a previous life he taught classics at several colleges and served as a school headmaster in South Carolina

2 Responses

  1. Sam Dickson says:
    March 23, 2020 at 8:34 am

    “This party is all over.” Ha, ha! Clever ditty.

    My mind went back to a hilarious article in the weekly throw-away paper in Berkeley, California, my brother sent me.

    It was entitled, “The Party’s Over.”

    It was about the local Communist Party in the wake of the collapse of Communism in the Soviet Union. The headline was a direct quote from a devastatedly melancholy Party apparatchik.

    It was full of information that appealed to my depraved meanness and schadenfreude that gave me unbounded delight as I read the statements of these Communists as they wailed about the statues of Lenin being toppled, etc.

    Is the party over for us?

    For me the economic impact of the crisis has been crushing. I will spare everyone the details. But “crushing” is the word.

    But there’s nothing to do but to put one foot in front of the other and soldier on…consoled by the thought contained in a Lithuanian proverb philologists use to show the connections of the Indo-European (Aryan) languages. Fleming with his annoying and envy-provoking knowledge of Latin and Greek will be able immediately be able to put the proverb in those languages and see how the words all begin with “d” and resemble each other.

    “God gave teeth. He will also give bread.”

    We remember that as the church teaches – melancholia is a sin against God’s providence.

  2. Roger McGrath says:
    March 23, 2020 at 1:55 pm

    OK, Tom, here’s my cleaned up version with an additional line. Now it’s up to you to put music to the versions we’ve created here at the Fleming Foundation and podcast them. Do we have anyone who can sing?

    Corona, Corona, where you been so long
    Tell me Corona, where you been so long
    I’ve had no fever, since you’ve been gone

    I fear Corona, tell the world I do
    I fear Corona, tell the world I do
    I hope someday, she will fear me too

    Corona, Corona, who’d you infect last night
    Tell me Corona, who’d you infect last night
    You came around this morning, sun was shinning bright

    I met Corona, way across the sea
    I met Corona, way across the sea
    She wouldn’t spare me, it’s plain to see

    I left Corona, way across the sea
    I left Corona, way across the sea
    If you contract Corona, don’t send any home to me