A Death in Retrospect

A dark humidity hung overhead
as I watched them coming home
from the funeral-
traces of death on their clothes.

                      When the front door opened
                      I could smell a cold finality
                      in the deep of her dress
                      in the folds.

There were speckles of damp on stiff black shirts,
And a glazed, moist, blur in the eyes of the grieving;
A pinched bend in the face.

                      How I pitied then much as they mourned-
                      Those hearts stained tepid with the lifeblood
                      of their brother-

The room a shadowy and morbid place.