Oh not because happiness exists,
that too-hasty profit snatched from approaching loss.
*********
But because truly being here is so much; because everything here
apparently needs us, this fleeting world, which is in some strange way
keeps calling to us. Us, the most fleeting of all.
*********
Ah, but what can we take along
into that other realm? Not the act of looking,
which is learned so slowly, and nothing that happened here. Nothing.
The sufferings, then. And above all, the heaviness,
and long experience of love, – just what is wholly
unsayable.
Author: Rainer Maria Rilke