I have had to diverge a bit more from the original here, because some references to the church and to Shrovetide would make no sense to us now, really. So I introduced some UK 21st century references instead.

Translation copyright Phillip Mannion 2020, I suppose!

Flu and the People

Like a strangler going about the land,
Beating a drum, a scythe in his hand,
with a fearful booming of his dread tatoo,
deepest black is veiled the flu.

Into every house it goes
And cuts down sheaves in bloody rows –
Pretty girls who won’t grow old
And many a lad though e’er so bold.

The people cry out in their need
loud to all of those who lead:
Why delay? Protect us from death –
what shall we be who struggle for breath?

You have the duty, you have the power –
Be a man now cometh the hour.
We tell you this: no more shirking,
do your job, come on, get working!

It’s a scandal, what they do, the fools,
Where are the bans? Where are the rules?
People sing and dance, boozing steady –
Are there not enough dead already?

Our rulers took advice of all kinds
Over and over all in their minds -
What do we need to do right now?
And o they had such worried brows.

And see – the effort has been repaid,
From all that thought a solution made:
soon it began, unusual and heavy,
raining bans constant and steady.

The flu was tired and almost done; next it
was thinking “Where is the exit?”–
and then the people made their choices
and cried with a hundred thousand voices:

“Hey government! Are you all mad?
This lockdown stuff is very bad
You heap on us, the dummies,
but not on Jenrick, not on Cummings.

Are we just here to pay our tax?
Show us the science, show us the facts.
And just before the start of summer!
Jesus, Johnson, what a bummer!”

“There are people who would like to impose,
Lockdown 2 – we are not those.
Schools and Parliament will be open,
For rules are just there to be broken!

That is what we want, what we are thinking –
set free the singing, set free the drinking!
(Or else, the plebs just might not buy it.
What is that song about a riot?)”

The flu, gasping on its last already,
smiled so soft and breathed in steady
And said: “Well, at last – hurray!”
And laughed in its malicious way.

“Yes, it still exists,” the flu began,
“the good old family of man!”
It stretched itself full pale and high
and sharpened once again its scythe.