This poem is the one that had the most powerful effect on me the first time I read it. I love that it starts with an ordinary routine and shows how quickly the deepest feelings can break in on it. The moment in which the joy at recognition of the loved accent turns to grief on realizing that it is a stranger's voice and the real loved one is dead has a huge impact. I immediately assented to the idea that silence would be important to the poet ("Only in silence, the word," as Ursula Le Guin writes), so the image of the door closing gently perfectly captures both the relationship and the moment of hearing about the death. The stone house in the fog was a very evocative image for me, which is doing double duty because it is clearly also a statement of fact. Wow.
Susan
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