Once Here

 . . .simply to be here is so much

and because what is here seems to need us,

this vanishing world that concerns us strangely—

us, the most vanishing of all.  Once

for each, only once.  Once and no more.

And we too:  just once.  Never again.  But

to have lived even once,

to have been of Earth—that cannot be taken from us.

From the Ninth Duino Elegy 

Rainer Maria Rilke