His mission was to grieve.
He came into the world with wailing
at the ready, never shed it.
The reasons were a laundry list
in those days, ones every housewife
could claim, but didn’t.
He fingered his beads, slid them
back and forth on the abacus
with a practiced speed.
True loss came at last,
and now the hunched back grows,
the weight multiplies,
and the dolorous leaves of lost color
drift down, clumped in the pond
with its still surface. When I saw him
last, still handsome, the laugh lines
had not deepened, and the intervals
between his fasts grow shorter
each day.

— Carol Hamilton