In Edna St. Vincent Millay's poem, "Sonnet V," the speaker, a woman, imagines learning "casually" of the death of a man she feels much affection for.
The poem was published near the end of World War I. Beloved men WERE "gone, and never could return". War is a part of the context--the setting is a subway, not unlike a trench--but war is not necessarily part of the speaker's or this particular man's life.
Why do you think the speaker may not be able to show her grief, if she learns of her loved one's death? Why do you think she begins to talk about "where to store furs and how to treat the hair"?