Bubonic Plague

In the Black Sea,
It kept to itself
Only often ever straying to the Middle East.
A dark hand to slap lazily
And Malevolently,
A dark hand built of fleas.

Then the ships and with
The rats.
The rats with fleas.

Italian city-states, mid fourteenth century,
Crossroads of the explored world.
Comings and goings,
Spices, salt, people, alchohol,
Rats
Fleas.

Manifestation,
Marks on the body,
Almost inevitable death.
Panic, abandonment.

Ecclesiastics,
The flagellants,
The panicked,
The contributers,
Spreading fear and filthy grime.
Blood and fluid, the infected.

The wild ones,
Live while you can,
We'll be dead soon anyway.
Spreading through excessive contact.
Social wildness,
Sex.
The contributers.

The moderates,
Those who weren't much changed.
The unclean accepted ways of the time.
The contributers.

The runners,
Flee from the city.
Run from God?
They'd say.
But it worked.
The fighters

The destruction,
Killed two-fifths of the populace.
Faith in God, but more importantly,
Faith in the church diminished.
And what they call the Black Death,
Gave Europe a shove,
Towards Enlightenment,
The rebirth,

The Renaissance.