When she could no longer prepare mash for the chickens or peel potatoes for the soup she lost her appetite even for bread and scarcely ate
He was painting himself black on the branches to watch the crows who no longer flew high but kept to the earth
Smaller than the stove she sat by the window where outside the leeks grow
By the wood stack - the hillsides of brushwood she had carried on her back - he crouched and became the chopping block
Her daughter-in-law fed the chickens put wood in the stove
At night he reclined on each side of the burning black fire burning her bed What she asked him was his opposite? Milk he answered with appetite
Lining the kitchen family and neighbours followed her fight for breath
High up on the mountain he pissed on snow and ice to melt the stream
She found it easier if she laid her head on the arm of the chair
His urine was the shape of an icicle and as colourless
In her hand she held a handkerchief to dab her mouth when it needed wiping
On his black mirror there was never breath
The guests as they left kissed the crown of her head and she knew them by their voices
He trundled out a barrow overturned it on the frozen dungheap its two legs still warm
The seventy-third anniversary of her marriage night she spent huddled in the kitchen from time to time calling her son she called him by his surname who rocked on his slippered feet like a bear
One mistake you made Death did not joke like a drunk You should not have grown old
I was not a thief she replied
Dead she looked as tall laid out on her bed in dress and boots as when a bride but her right shoulder was lower than the left on account of all she had carried
At her funeral the village saw the soft snow bury her before the gravedigger