And in the best of all possible lives, that beginning and that end are the same: in poem after poem I encountered words that mark the first something made out of language that we hear as children repeated night after night, like a refrain:

I love you. I am here with you.
Don’t be afraid. Go to sleep now.

And I encountered words that mark the last something made out of language that we hope to hear on earth:

I love you. I am here with you.
Don’t be afraid. Go to sleep now.

But it is growing damp and I must go in.

Memory’s fog is rising. Among Emily Dickinson’s last words (in a letter). A woman whom everyone thought of as shut-in, homebound, cloistered, spoke as if she had been out, exploring the earth, her whole life, and it was finally time to go in. And it was.