To live everything

Few years ago, a friend asked me to consider the words below.

It has taken me a while to finally understand them and myself. 

   „I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart 

and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms

 or books written in a very foreign language.

 Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, 

because you would not be able to live them.

  And the point is to live everything.

  Live the questions now.

 

  Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, 

live your way into the answer.”

 

(Rainer Maria Rilke’s 1903, Letters to a Young Poet)

If mirrors could speak... Self image film

For A., who should remember that at the end of every journey there is a handful of red berries waiting for her.

The seasons that pass over my fields

Your pain is the breaking of the shell
that encloses your understanding.

Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its
heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.

And could you keep your heart in wonder
at the daily miracles of your life, your pain
would not seem less wondrous than your joy;

And you would accept the seasons of your
heart, even as you have always accepted
the seasons that pass over your fields.

And you would watch with serenity
through the winters of your grief.

Much of your pain is self-chosen.

It is the bitter potion by which the
physician within you heals your sick self.

Therefore trust the physician, and drink
his remedy in silence and tranquillity:

For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided
by the tender hand of the Unseen,
And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips,
has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter
has moistened with His own sacred tears. 

(Khalil Gibran: Your pain is....)

*

Over the valley

Spring rain (III)

Sunday mood with tulips

They say

They say

Love grows

When the fear of death

Looms.

They say

Courage looms

When the fear

Of never loving again

Disappears

In the smell of the enemy

Who crushes us so much

We can only fight.

Love and courage grow together

When the flesh is rawest

And the spirit charged

And distorted within the nightmare

We see the possibility

Of a future.

(Ben Okri: They Say)

My red spring butterflies

Were we only white birds...

Would that we were, my beloved, white birds on the foam of the sea!

We tire of the flame of the meteor, before it can fade and flee;

And the flame of the blue star of twilight, hung low on the rim of the sky,

Has awakened in our hearts, my beloved, a sadness that may not die.

A weariness comes from those dreamers, dew-dabbled, the lily and rose;

Ah, dream not of them, my beloved, the flame of the meteor that goes,

Or the flame of the blue star that lingers hung low in the fall of the dew:

For I would we were changed to white birds on the wandering foam: I and you!

I am haunted by numberless islands, and many a Danaan shore,

Where Time would surely forget us, and Sorrow come near us no more;

Soon far from the rose and the lily, and fret of the flames would we be,

Were we only white birds, my beloved, buoyed out on the foam of the sea!

(W.B. Yeats: The White Birds)

Après quoi, tu dis : je vole

Mai întâi îţi strângi umerii,
mai apoi te înalţi pe vârful picioarelor,
închizi ochii
refuzi auzul.
Îţi spui în sine:
acum voi zbura.
Apoi zici:
Zbor
Şi acesta e zborul.

Tout d'abord tu serres tes épaules

ensuite tu t'élèves sur la pointe des pieds

tu fermes les yeux

et te bouches les oreilles.

Tu te dis à toi-même :

maintenant, je vais voler.

Après quoi, tu dis :

je vole

et c'est juste cela le vol.

Îţi strângi umerii
cum se strâng râurile într-un singur fluviu.
Îţi închizi ochii
cum închid norii câmpia.
Te-nalţi pe vârful picioarelor
cum se înalţă piramida pe nisip.
Refuzi auzul,
auzul unui singur secol,
şi-apoi îţi spui în sinea ta:
acum voi zbura
de la naştere spre moarte.
După aceea zici:
Zbor
Şi acesta e timpul.

Tu serres les épaules

à la manière des rivières qui se rassemblent dans un seul fleuve.

Tu fermes les yeux

pareillement aux nuages qui encerclent le champ.

Tu te hausses sur la pointe des pieds

telle la pyramide qui s'élève sur le sable.

Tu renonces complètement à l'ouïe

l'ouïe de tout un siècle

ensuite tu te dis à toi-même :

maintenant, je volerai

dès ma naissance jusqu'à la mort.

Après quoi tu te dis encore :

je vole -

et c'est bien cela le temps.

(Lecţia de zbor: Nichita Stănescu)/(La leçon de vol: Nichita Stănescu; Traduit du roumain par Constantin Crişan)