After the plague had come and gone a second time,
after the panic, after the convulsive festival,
after the silence had set in a second time,
I was astonished to observe I was still standing.

And there were one or two others in my region
similarly astonished and similarly
alone, but we kept apart, preferred not to tempt
fate —as it were — preferred this monastic enterprise,

which we, I suppose, undertook in a mixture
of mute relief and nagging culpability.
Nor did I presume the serpentine contagion
had withdrawn completely. The last outbreak had lain