Commentary

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“Not that grief vanishes—far from it,” the next paragraph by Mark Doty begins.  When we are grieving we “go through the motions of a life in which we have no faith.” We see a truth that the giddy dailiness hides: “that everything disappears, everything’s brief.” During his time of grief Doty would see lovers in the street and think, “Don’t they know? Can’t they see where they’re headed.” The emptiness never goes away.  In time, though, it begins “to coexist with pleasure” and “sorrow sits right beside the rediscovery of what is to be cherished in experience.” It happens “just when you think you're done.” Bounding in on the senses like a “golden new dog” racing over sand whose eyes are filling with you. Or “flaring pink” in a “crescendo of bloom” from “flowerheads packed with petals” and bearing exotic names. Or “catching lamplight” like the look in a lover’s eyes delighting in a song with “whole body enthusiasm.” Or sitting “completely happy” in the falling snow like an old dog “black curls gone arctic.” Grief never stops delivering its monotonously unbearable truth, but “desire brings us back.”

—THE