Death

When Mother got very sick
Father gifted me ignorance;
Sister went to Warsaw to say good0by,
Mother tried to kick her out.

She feared people
Would steal her husband;
When he went grocery shopping,
She followed him in her nightgown.

He worried about the winter
In the winter, death came.

The men from the funeral home were drunk
Father drove behind their truck
To make sure they wouldn't loose the coffin
Skidding around icy corners.

He carried everywhere an old shopping bag
With a yellow catalog of German tools;
In between its pages,he kept all the papers
That made the death official.

I thought that, for everything he had gone through
In his life, he at least deserved a decent briefcase.

At the funeral, my sister and I intruded
When the last Jews of Warsaw
Buried of of their own.

It has been thirty years now,
I hardly remember her endearments for him;
His, I hear every time I visit,
Spoken to my stepmother.