Marilyn Hacker"s Winter Numbers is a meditation on death, a collection of painful poems in the wake of losing loved ones to AIDS and cancer. The numbers referred to here are the metronomic beats of passing time, the mile markers on life"s journey, the months remaining in a doctor"s grim prognosis. The only solace is in connection, as Hacker writes in Year"s End: "Underneath the numbers, how lives are braided." Highly recommended for the mortal.