16 pages • 32 minutes read
The Virus
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Themes
Human Body
In Brown’s poem, the virus addresses its victim intending to remind them that they are still vulnerable to its malignant power. Medications keep the virus at bay, but it is there, invisible yet potent, threatening the person’s physical and mental wellbeing. One way in which the virus’s reminder of its lasting presence affects the person is by reminding them that on a purely biological level a human being is just a complex system of bodily organs: “I’m still here / Just beneath your skin and in / Each organ” (Lines 9-11). These organs are intricately connected but also performing their individual functions and encumbered by their individual limits and weaknesses. Since AIDS depresses the patient’s immune system, almost every organ is susceptible to opportunistic infections caused by viruses and bacteria that would be harmless in a healthy body. Before the advance of effective treatments, AIDS patients died of rare diseases that would attack their brain, lungs, kidneys, or other organs. At the point of such physical infirmity, a person’s sense of a mentally unified self is shattered as their organs fail one by one through a series of biological processes that their mind cannot control. Being forced to perceive oneself as a cluster of faltering organs rather than a thinking and feeling person is one of the most malicious effects that the virus, in the poem and in life, has on its victim. This sense that the virus fragments both the body and the human psyche is reflected in the poem’s choice to personify the virus as the speaker. By emphasizing the ways in which HIV affects both the mind and the body of the patient, Brown’s poem touches upon the perennial poetic theme of the tension between the indomitable power of the human mind and the fragility of the human body.
Creation versus Destruction
Another abiding poetic theme in “The Virus” is the complementary powers of creation and destruction in nature, including human life. The key actions in the poem are killing and planting. Planting flowers is a life-giving activity, so the virus’s desire to kill both the flowers and the person planting them marks it as a symbol of radical destruction. Its aim is to kill not only the human being but also that human being’s power to create, not the least in the sense of artistic creation; flowers must be nurtured and cultivated to develop their radiant beauty, and the same is true for art.
To the extent that the human being in the poem might be the poet himself, the planting of flowers is analogous to his writing of poems. By extension, the virus’s desire to kill the flowers is also a desire to kill the poet’s artistic ability, his power to bring beauty into the world. As long as a person living with HIV/AIDS is able to create and enjoy beauty, the virus has not prevailed. That is another way to understand the virus’s insistence on spoiling its victim’s pleasure in watching the flowers because that is essentially an aesthetic pleasure, the same kind we derive from watching a work of art. Antagonistic to life, the virus is necessarily also antagonistic to art, as a major source of life’s joy. Since it cannot destroy art, or the human impulse to create, the virus must endeavor to disrupt human enjoyment of art. When in the final lines the virus suggests that it has made the flowers less radiant in the eyes of its victim, one implication is that it has also reduced the poet’s ability to give life and beauty to his poems. But this poem’s very existence proves the virus wrong. The poem itself proves it is the human—and the poet—who has ultimate agency; the poet chose to endow the virus with voice and the poet can choose to silence it as well. In this way, the poem can be read as an act of exorcism through which the poet frees himself from the virus’s hold over his imagination and mental wellbeing.
Looking
The virus reminds the victim that it is present in every organ, but it dwells the most on its potential impact on the victim’s eyesight. Of all human senses, which include hearing, taste, touch, and smell, for many people eyesight is the most prominent way in which we explore and enjoy the world. In advanced stages of AIDS, some patients develop conditions that can severely impact their vision, even leading to blindness. The person whom the virus addresses is healthy since the virus is “undetectable” (Line 1), which is why the virus says, “I can’t / Blur your view” (Lines 2-3). At least, the virus cannot harm the victim’s physical eyesight. However, in this poem, eyesight also represents mental vision, the patient’s subjective perspective of the world, on which even undetectable virus can have a profound impact. The victim knows that the virus is lurking deep inside their body waiting for the opportunity to pounce and wreak havoc, and that knowledge darkens their mental vision. That is the effect the virus’s speech is intended to have. People living with HIV/AIDS can have happy and productive lives, but once they are reminded of the threat, they may “Look. Look / Again” (Lines 16-17) and see their lives through darker lenses.
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By Jericho Brown
