The heart's whole protest against transience is in these few words. The world's truth is inevitable change, inevitable loss; the poem grants and allows it. Set against that, Issa's "and yet" is an objection as plainly useless as it is planetary in size. But in our human lives, the lived perspective is what is felt, not what is known in the mind as "fact." The moon seen near the horizon cannot help but be seen as huge--how much more close and enormous, the death of a child. The pain this poem reveals in its curtain-lift instant is as much sorrow as any person who is able to choose would choose to bear. Reading it, we know that for Issa, the haiku's duration is lifelong. That knowledge is no small part of why the poem sears, and does not stop searing when words cease.