Widower Alfonso Poem by Ilya Kaminsky

At the funeral I, embarrassed by resistance fighters
shuffling up to shake my hand

said:
I fold your daughter in a white napkin—

With these brief gifts
you go, my doorslamming wife; and I, a fool, live.

But the voice I don't hear when I speak to myself is the clearest voice:
When my wife washes my hair, I kiss

between her toes, my lips tremble,
in the empty streets of our district, a bit of wind

calls for the life which no one knew, a life
which daily takes all of us, my neighbor taken, his children

taken, their apartment quiet. I say
this slowly:

their apartment quiet, on the floor
dirty snow from their boots.