Three quotations from books I was reading yesterday, all of which explain why I'm feeling, in Robert Frost's words, that "there is a residue of extreme sorrow that nothing can be done about and over it poetry lingers to brood with sympathy. I have heard poetry charged with having a vested interest in sorrow.” And sometimes, as in Toibin's case, prose counts as poetry.

from "A Pink Wool Knitted Dress" by Ted Hughes (in the poetry collection Birthday Letters)

In your pink wool knitted dress
Before anything had smudged anything
You stood at the altar. Bloomsday.

from "The Pearl Fishers" by Colm Toibin (in the story collection The Empty Family)

We must turn our bewilderment in the world into a gift from God.

from "Questions for Baron" by Howard Levy (in the forthcoming poetry collection Spooky Action at a Distance)

You are three states away,
due north. I hope it is much cooler,
yet loneliness can adapt to every condition.
We often house it with winter,
shut in by cold and snow,
Frost’s Storm Fear, after all,
the screaming wind that buries talk,
the sharp icicle of it: how loneliness can pierce
the heart and then melt away
as if nothing had broken through the skin.
But in this blazing sunlight, the thermometer
reading 98 in the shade, the world
sickeningly full of August, colors flagrant
in the harsh sun, everything
wilted but the buzzing flies and bees,
there it is, humming along,
part of the furnace.