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)

That day...

there were round words those that rolled in between us

from your side of the table towards mine

when winter was melting away

it is true, it is true, you then said,

as if truth were what we were after

we talked of setting each other free

as if freedom were what one lacked

your lips, the smell of new books, your voice

although I never asked what you most adored

that day when winter was fading away

taking another sip you already knew

missing me was not going to be easy

and then I poured you yet another cup

waiting for that winter to turn into spring

For you, my spring

Afternoon with a Flower Lady