Our grandparents are happy

in the photo, green as a leaf.

Our young grandmother in love

lays her head on her husband’s shoulder.

Grandfather doesn’t know yet he has died.

He puffs up his chest garlanded with a fob-chain.

Indulgently he holds his arm around

our young dead grandmother.

He doesn’t know yet that next to them

strange cousins rest, and their dead children,

under the porch where breakfast was served

on past mornings of a pleasant summer.

Our grandmother doesn’t know at all

that her hands clasp a cold rosary.

In the tilt of her neck happiness plays

like music in a dead instrument.