Early Elegy: Smallpox
by Claudia Emerson

• The world has certified itself rid of
• all but the argument: to eradicate or not
• the small stock of variola frozen,
• quarantined—a dormancy it has
• refused, just once, for a woman behind a sterile
• lens, her glass slide a clearest, most
• becoming pane. How could it resist slipping
• away with her, that discrete first