It is nothing new to say that we
are in the grip of a play directed
by a madman, while we just wring

our hands and then sit on our thumbs
ignoring what is happening on stage —
the reality that hundreds of thousands

of our fellow actors have died
and hundreds of thousands more
stand in the wings of the plague’s

stage ready for their entrance into
the madman’s play and fast exit
stage left. The existentialists just

shrug and say hang in there; the
nihilists mutter “humph” and we
told you so; and the rest of us just

squirm in our comfortable, cushion-
ed seats as the lights come down
and the curtain goes up on the final

act and we wonder if the director
will summon us when every other
actor has exited.