Paris Review - Elegy by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Stephen Mitchell

Oh the losses into the All, Marina, the stars that are falling! We can’t make it larger, wherever we fling ourselves, to whatever star we may go! In the Whole, all things are already numbered. So when anyone falls, the perfect sum is not lessened. Whoever lets go in his fall, dives into the source and is  healed. Is all of life, then, a game, a meaningless fluctuation of sameness, nowhere a name, nowhere a lasting  achievement? Waves, Marina, we are ocean! Depths, Marina, we are sky. Earth, Marina, we are earth, a thousand times springtime,  like larks that a song bursting out of their breast flings into invisible heights. We begin it as joy, and already it wholly surpasses us; suddenly the force of our heaviness bends the song down to  lament. Yet isn’t lament really a younger, descending joy? Even the gods below want to be praised, Marina, So innocent are gods, they listen for praise like children. Praising, my dearest—let us be lavish with praise, nothing really belongs to us. We pu

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