AmeriCorps Graduation [more on goodbyes]

Be ahead of all parting, as if it had already happened
like winter, which even now is passing.
For beneath the winter is a winter so endless
that to survive it at all is a triumph of the heart.

Be forever dead in Eurydice, and climb back singing.
Climb back praising as you return to connection.
Here among the disappearing, in the realm of the transient,
be a ringing glass that shatters as it rings.

Be.  And, at the same time, know what it is not to be.
That emptiness inside you allows you to vibrate
in resonance with the world.  Use it for once.

To all that has run its course, and to the vast unsayable
numbers of beings abounding in nature,
add yourself gladly, and cancel the cost.

-Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus, part two, XIII