A patriarch makes his bed in the ground.

He is snug in his duvet of dirt.

Be quiet now, says a young girl to her brother,

The dead will rise and make our skin their suits.

Everyone agrees his crying is appropriate,

They give him their worn but compassionate smiles.

A son whose face is marked by each failure

Talks to the empty sky.

In the morning there will be a word,

Lying doubtless like a gun on the table.

He will read his newspaper sighing,

His wife will touch him gently on the shoulder

As language fails her once more.

The following day,

He will go to his parents’ house,

Hug his mother and try to ignore the unbridgeable silence.

He will look in his father’s study

At his meticulously ironed monochrome suits,

Waiting empty in his wardrobe.

He will flick through his books of human dust,

That brought him hours of lonely pleasure.

He will turn and see his father’s writing

Barely legible on a scrap piece of paper,

Knowing it will be binned.

He will step back and observe

The room as if he were a stranger,

Trespassing.

He will shut his father’s door

And feel no resolution,

He will feel too guilty to cry.