The story of the laughing son - a poem by Chris Zachariou

A chronicle of a death foretold

At six o'clock

with his open casket

on their stooping shoulders

the frozen mourners shiver

and stumble in the mud.

The lilac march rises

in the sombre streets

and a eulogy draped in black
weeps silently in the censer.

When he closed his eyes
at three in the afternoon
under the shade of a dwarf lament

a moth puzzled by the brightness
   of the moon

sat trembling on his upper lip.

It lay in his tobacco-stained moustache

with eyes full of sorcery and sang
   'la cumparsita'

accompanied by three doleful voices

of gypsies on guitars.

His mother howling like a jilted dog,

called out to him by his name at birth;

a name no one had heard since the day

the laughing son was born.

The padre ran to the house
of endless misery but all he saw
were two soldiers crossing off
his name from their list

and night's first-born child
fleeing through the side gate
disguised as a yellow moth.