a widow and a priest

A Widow and a Priest.

It was six in the morning I was on the roof terrace
smoking an illicit cigarette when the ambulance came
gliding into the hamlet, stopped outside Antonio’s
house and carried him out on a stretcher, his wife
came along too; Antonio saw me and feebly waved.
In the forenoon his wife was a widow and she cried.
The house was suddenly full of relative, most of them
women. Funereal at five that day, the widow had been
astute enough to have everything arranged beforehand,
his body was now in the church…waiting

At the graveside the priest said the usual thing, shook
hands with the widow and walked home alone, feeling
friendless, he didn’t think of the funereal, had seen so
many dead faces ravaged by age or sickness, immune
he had become, not so when young laying awake at
night thinking about it horror struck; he had served
here for years now waiting for a new call or an advance
within the hierarchy, feeling forsaken by the Vatican,
hadn’t he written learned articles about the philosophy
faiths and received a thank you note from the cardinal?
Nothing more he could do, couldn’t very well ask god.
At home his housekeeper served him a roast chicken
and cellar cold red-wine; he sighed, tucked in, death
always made him hungry.

Female relatives stayed with the bereaved for a week,
men are curiously absent on these occasions, then they
went back to their own worries, the widow began her
new life by going to the hairdresser