Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

The day somebody died in the neighborhood
Manuel sent Ricardito, his son,
to go to the wake with his mother.

Ricardito, no older than eight,
heard his father tell his mother
about making sure to offer the bereaved

family sympathy, El pesame, he called it,
Spanish for condolences, and so when
the time came he watched as people approached

the open casket and knelt, Ricardito took
his turn but couldn’t take his eyes
away from the lips of the deceased, the way

bad light made them ruby, the way one nostril
seemed more open than the other,
and the single thick hair that protruded

from a narrow nostril. He knelt there
and told the deceased how sorry
he was. He offered the dead

man his sympathy, something he knew
nothing about. He had seen the life
flash out of a little sparrow’s eyes when he

shot it from the clothesline with a sling
shot he’d built from surgical tubing
but though he thought of the word dolor,

he came up empty. When he and his mother
returned home, Manuel asked how
everything went and Ricardito told him

what he said, the words he’d spoken
to the dead man, and his father couldn’t
control his laughter at his son making such

an innocent mistake. “What did he say to you?”
Manuel asked his son, who stood confused,
more distraught than ever. “Nothing,” he
                                                         answered.

“He lay there in the box, not saying anything”
Ricardito stood in the living room
and smiled when his parents chuckled and
                                                              laughed.

He wondered if these two same adults would
                                                                 laugh
if he told them that the deceased had spoken
to him, in the way the dead man puckered his
                                                                     lips

into a bright and beautiful rose which
                                                       contained
all this nervous adult laughter of the living.