From "In The Time of Butterflies" by Julia Alvarez

"Thursday night, December 31
last day of this old sad year
I can write the saddest things tonight.
Here I am looking out at the stars, everything so sill so mysterious.
What does it all mean, anyway?
(I don't like this kind of thinking like Minerva likes. It makes my asthma worse.)
I want to know things I don't even know what they are.
But I could be happy without answers if I had someone to love.

And so it is of human life the goal
to seek, forever seek, the kindred soul.

I quoted that to Minerva before she left for Jarabacoa. But she got down our Gems of Spanish Poetry and quoted me another Poem by the same poet:

May the limitations of love not cas a spell
On the serious ambitions of my mind.

I couldn't believe the same man had written those two verses. But sure enough, there it was, José Martí, dates and all. Minerva showed me her poem was written later. "When he knew what mattered."
Maybe she's right, what does love come to anyway? Look at Papá and Mamá after so many years.
I can write the saddest things tonight."