"We are in a war," says Poet Laureate David Eggleton.

It might not exactly look like it, for many sitting at home watching Netflix.

But as we draw to our national war remembrance day, it is the parallels with the deadly fight against Covid-19, along with the anxiety and dread, and those who made the greatest sacrifice that provided inspiration for Listening to the Silence, an exclusive Anzac Day poem commissioned for Herald readers.

"This is a special Anzac Day. Never before has there been such a deadly battle happening here, as we think about those who fought on the home front," he tells the Weekend Herald.

In Listening to the Silence, which you can read below, Eggleton captures the emptiness, and the loneliness of the lockdown - which he says he experiences on his government-mandated bike rides around the streets of north Dunedin - "a ghost town, sense of suspended animation", and while waiting in line at the supermarket - "surrounded by people but still alone".

But more importantly, his poem speaks to the collectiveness, the sense New Zealanders are all in this fight together.

"I was fascinated by the parallels between wartime and now. There is a sense of anticipation, anxiety and dread about the future.

"But we are a plucky little nation, believe in giving everyone a fair go, and are working together to overcome something."

There are also notions of the underdog spirit, with little New Zealand leading the world in its response, and parallels with the courage and bravery of those who landed and died at Gallipoli on April 25, 1915 - "a heroic failure," Eggleton says.

As Poet Laureate for 2019-2021, Eggleton has a duty to write poetry accessible to the public.

Listening to the Silence not only captures the mood of the nation, but even includes pop culture references to the Lord of the Rings, such as Sauron's riders and Nazgul, drawing parallels with how the hobbits were forced out of their village.

On a personal level he references his father, who fought in World War II as a navigator aboard a Lancaster bomber.

"We all have our stories," Eggleton says.

He ends on the Māori proverb: "Kia kaha, kia māia, kia manawanui" - be strong, be staunch, be true, be bold.

It is somewhat ironic Eggleton's words now adorn the Weekend Herald, the poet last year having told The Listener: "We have got to a situation where people trust poems more than they trust the news – the authenticity of the emotion in a poem speaks more profoundly now than ever."

"With a poem you get a sense of a mood or feeling, rather than just flat news, which often needs have a neutral tone with just facts," he says.

"We are in a war, and it is happening here in New Zealand."

Listening to the Silence

In the deepest quiet known for years,

Listen closely to this empty silence,

The trees that sough, the boom of surf,

The night alive with a hum of bubbles:

Pivotal moment in the nation's story,

As each of us mooches, and broods on

The philosophical guts of the whole damn thing.

From the abandoned streets of the big parade,

To a people blockade, our islands quarantined,

And the taste of siege at the break of day,

Now is the April of our discontent

Made into the browns and golds of autumn.

Our hearts, the slow drumbeat of Anzac Day,

With fresh wreaths laid on the Unknown Soldier's Tomb,

And poppies that bleed for the Cenotaph's dead.

Those in uniforms bedecked with medals

Wait, like all of us, at a self-aware distance.

My father slumped down in his wheelchair,

Proud of the war medals pinned to his chest,

Never lived to see the fetch of this swell,

Or hear this alarm bell, watch this rising tide.

Shadows reach out like Sauron's Riders,

The Nazgul, as the menace of the microbe

Marches implacable, on a day that marks

A remembrance of sacrifice and loss,

Written in textbooks as exalted poetry,

Made from a nation's flesh and blood.

Spirit of Anzac means courage, resistance.

See bird wing lift over leaf, higher,

Then higher, to fly the unbudgeable hill,

And a cloak of arohanui thrown on all:

So be strong, be staunch, be true, be bold

— Kia kaha, kia māia, kia manawanui.

David Eggleton