PROGNOSIS

Petrarch watched a plague: it took

half of Europe, says my book.

Now of course we've found the rat.

Anyway, half lived. And yet

 

something very like a plague

propagates, and while our vague

fears breed fear, the insecure

vaccinate themselves---with fear.

 

Flesh, that to uranium

seems a power vacuum,

cannot linger uncommitted:

sooner, later, all are pitted.

 

Saved from Mao and Molotov,

millions leave the clinic of

Doctor Dulles, Doctor Nixon,

rabid with their antitoxin.

 

Millions more, on Khrushchev's serum,

rage with fear of those that fear them.

Shadows prowl at every back.

All precaution is attack.

 

Still, the books will skimp it, if

here and there a spasm of life

raises on the ruins one

knowing cross of bone on bone.

 

Schoolboy Chaucer feared the bog,

fled from shapes of mist and fog.

We can grin, and blame the flea:

air, we know, kills boundlessly.