"ONCE Only"

       The epigraph to Mary Oliver's book Swan is a quote from Rilke's Duino Elegies.  It took me two or three readings, but I felt repaid for them:


               Everyone once, once only.  Just once and no more.
               And we also once.  Never again.  But this having been
               once, although only once, to have been of the earth,
               seems irrevocable.


       Taking that seriously is a lot of the import of Mary Oliver's poems:


              When it's over, I don't want to wonder
              if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
              I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
              or full of argument.

              I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
                                               from "When Death Comes"


        (By the way, "epigraph" simply means "writing above or upon" from the Greek.)