.
The daughter of an Ebola victim grieves, Monrovia, Liberia: photo by Marcos DiPaola / Nur Photo / Rex via The Guardian, 16 October 2014
Sie war schon aufgelöst wie langes Haar
und hingegeben wie gefallner Regen
und ausgeteilt wie hundertfacher Vorrat.
Sie war schon Wurzel.
Und als plötzlich jäh
der Gott sie anhielt und mit Schmerz im Ausruf
die Worte sprach: Er hat sich umgewendet -,
begriff sie nichts und sagte leise: Wer?
Fern aber, dunkel vor dem klaren Ausgang,
stand irgend jemand, dessen Angesicht
nicht zu erkennen war. Er stand und sah,
wie auf dem Streifen eines Wiesenpfades
mit trauervollem Blick der Gott der Botschaft
sich schweigend wandte, der Gestalt zu folgen,
die schon zurückging dieses selben Weges
den Schritt beschränkt von langen Leichenbändern,
unsicher, sanft und ohne Ungeduld.
und hingegeben wie gefallner Regen
und ausgeteilt wie hundertfacher Vorrat.
Sie war schon Wurzel.
Und als plötzlich jäh
der Gott sie anhielt und mit Schmerz im Ausruf
die Worte sprach: Er hat sich umgewendet -,
begriff sie nichts und sagte leise: Wer?
Fern aber, dunkel vor dem klaren Ausgang,
stand irgend jemand, dessen Angesicht
nicht zu erkennen war. Er stand und sah,
wie auf dem Streifen eines Wiesenpfades
mit trauervollem Blick der Gott der Botschaft
sich schweigend wandte, der Gestalt zu folgen,
die schon zurückging dieses selben Weges
den Schritt beschränkt von langen Leichenbändern,
unsicher, sanft und ohne Ungeduld.
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926): Orpheus. Eurydike. Hermes, 1904, aus Neue Gedichte (1907) 
Mercy Kennedy, 9, cries, a day after her mother died of Ebola. She was among a cluster of residents in Monrovia, Liberia, that included Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian man admitted to a Dallas as the first Ebola case in the United States: photo by Jerome Delay / Associated Press, 2 October 2014
Mercy Kennedy, 9, cries as she learns her mother has died, outside her home in Monrovia, Liberia. Kennedy's mother was taken away by an ambulance to an Ebola ward the day before: photo by Jerome Delay / Associated Press, 2 October 2014
The shoes of a suspected Ebola patient are seen after being cordoned off with stones by local residents in Freetown, Sierra Leone: photo by Michael Duff / Associated Press, 24 September 2014
Monrovia, Liberia. A woman throws a handful of soil towards the body of her sister as Ebola burial team members take her for cremation: photo by John Moore/Getty Images via the Guardian, 13 October 2014
She was already loosened like long hair,
poured out like fallen rain,
shared like a limitless supply.
She was already root.
And when, abruptly,
the god put out his hand to stop her, saying,
with sorrow in his voice: He has turned around--,
she could not understand, and softly answered
Who?
Far away,
dark before the shining exit-gates,
someone or other stood, whose features were
unrecognizable. He stood and saw
how, on the strip of road among the meadows,
with a mournful look, the god of messages
silently turned to follow the small figure
already walking back along the path,
her steps constricted by the trailing graveclothes,
uncertain, gentle, and without impatience.
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926): from Orpheus, Eurydice, Hermes, 1904, in New Poems (1907), translated from the German by Stephen Mitchell
A police officer patrols an empty street in Freetown during a three-day, nationwide curfew in Sierra Leone. Health workers were going door to door, educating about Ebola and looking for patients: photo by Tanya Bindra / European Pressphoto Agency, 27 September 2014
Bystanders listen to a street preacher calling on people to raise their hands and "Wave Ebola Bye Bye" in Monrovia, Liberia: photo by Jerome Delay / Associated Press, 27 September 2014
Doctors Without Borders staff wearing protective suits burn waste at the organization's Donka Ebola management centre in Conakry, Guinea. Waste material is incinerated every night to prevent infection, since no object that cannot be chlorinated is allowed to leave the medical facility's high risk zone. Conakry, the first major city to be affected by the Ebola outbreak, is currently seeing a massive spike in cases. Doctors Without Borders says it is now caring for more than 120 patients in its two facilities in Guinea. The Donka Ebola management centre, situated inside the Ministry of Health hospital complex in Conakry, has been particularly badly affected. The facility admitted 22 patients in one day (6 October), 18 of them coming from the Coyah region, 50 kilometres east of Conakry.: photo by Julien Rey / Courtesy Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders, 9 October 1014
Member of a Red Cross burial team, Monrovia, Liberia: photo by Marcos DiPaola / Nur Photo / Rex via The Guardian, 16 October 2014