"The boy worked there about eighteen months, came home one evening with a shortness of breath. He said, "Mother, I cannot get my breath." Shirley was… - Muriel Rukeyser

Plague summer in London : and an increase of over 1000 deaths a week. Ralegh tried to kill himself the day after he was imprisoned, but the table knife with which he stabbed himself in the right breast left only a painful wound. During the fortnight in which he was healing, he could hear the bells ringing for plague victims. The bells never stopped tolling. In the streets, people with running sores could be seen, in hatred trying to infect others by strewing contaminated gloves, handkerchiefs, ruffs. Families took their bedding and went out into the country. The court of justice was removed to Winchester. One out of every six in the City was sick or dying of the plague. Infected ale-houses were not shut up. Londoners went out to the outlying towns, and died under the hedges; in Hampstead, they would fall in the yards and out-buildings, and there were barns around London where many would run to die. The jails were infected. There was an outbreak of 30 prisoners in Southwark; they were caught and put under stricter custody.
At the end of July, Ralegh was well and asking for Hariot.

"The man in the white coat is the man on the hill,
the man with the clean hands is the man with the drill,
the man who answers "yes" lies still."

I don't believe that poetry can save the world. I do believe that the forces in our wish to share something of our experience by turning it into something and giving it to somebody: that is poetry. That is some kind of saving thing, and as far as my life is concerned, poetry has saved me again and again.