Life's interruptions, beauty, and all the things left unsaid

Three excerpts from fiction & poetry that I read at the New Yorker.

First up, an excerpt from a short story:

Looking back, Eva could see that the real interruption had not been her father’s death. The fact was that in the aftermath of the funeral, when it had seemed as if the whole world had fallen silent, what had troubled Eva most was her marriage… -- The Bell Ringer, by john Burnside

Also,

Our capacity to be overwhelmed by the beautiful
Survives, unlike beauty,
Amid the harshest distractions.
- from the poem, On Beauty by James Longenbach

and..

echoes in every room
without a sound
all the things that we
had never been able to say
I could not remember
- from the poem, A Single Autumn by W. S. Merwin