For I say, this is death, and the sole death, / When a man's loss comes to him from his gain,/ Darkness from light, from knowledge ignorance, / And lack of love from love made manifest.

Backward and forward each throwing his shuttle, / Death ending all with a knife.

I know that it's easier to look at death than it is to look at pain, because while death is irrevocable, and the grief will lessen in time, pain is too often merely relentless and irreversible.

Adam is crying and somewhere inside of me I am crying, too, because I'm feeling things at last. I'm feeling not just the physical pain, but all that I have lost, and it is profound and catastrophic and will leave a crater in me that nothing will ever fill.

At the temple there is a poem called "Loss" carved into the stone. It has three words, but the poet has scratched them out. You cannot read loss, only feel it.

The death of Wang, coming almost exactly one year after Koo, is a loss for both sides of the Strait.