Elegy with a Radio Left On

They left the radio on in the roomfor three days after, because nobodycould think of who would be the one to crossthe carpet and decide that it was time.

It played the station he had set in 1994and never changed: the weather every hourfor a county he had not driven through in years,a farm report, a man with a soft voicereading back the numbers of the world.

We sat in it. We let it do the talking.When my sister finally reached over,she did not turn it off. She turned it down,which is a different verb, and the onewe have been using for him ever since.