When it’s over, I want to say: All my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. - Mary Oliver

When it's over, I want to say all my life I was a bride married to amazement.

We do not think of it every day, but we never forget it: the beloved shall grow old, or ill, and be taken away finally. No matter how ferociously we fight, how tenderly we love, how bitterly we argue, how pervasively we berate the universe, how cunningly we hide, this is what shall happen.

"Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say
"Look!" and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads."

I don't know what God is. I don't know what death is. But I believe they have between them some fervent and necessary arrangement.