Liebe ist schwer. Liebhaben von Mensch zu Mensch: das ist vielleicht das Schwerste, was uns aufgegeben ist, das Äußerste, die letzte Probe und Prüfung.

…As one puts a handkerchief before pent-in-breath-
no: as one presses it against a wound
out of which the whole of life, in a single gush,
wants to stream, I held you to me: I saw you
turn red from me. How could anyone express
what took place between us? We made up for everything
there was never time for. I matured strangely
in every impulse of unperformed youth,
and you, love, had wildest childhood over my heart…

…Lovers were not, Marina, *are* not permitted to know
destruction so deeply. Must be as if they were new.
Only their grave is old, only *it* ponders and darkens
under the sobbing tree, remembering all that has been.
Only their grave collapses; *they* are supple as reeds;
what bends them too far, rounds them into rich garlands.
How they blow about in the May wind! From the midst of
the Ever,
in which you breathe and surmise, the moment has shut
them out.
(Oh how I understand you, female flower on the same
imperishable stalk. How wildly I scatter myself into the
night air
that in a moment will touch you.)…”

―from_Elegy: to Marina Tsvetayeva-Efron_

You, God, who live next door--

If at times, through the long night, I trouble you
with my urgent knocking--
this is why: I hear you breathe so seldom.
I know you're all alone in that room.
If you should be thirsty, there's no one
to get you a glass of water.
I wait listening, always. Just give me a sign!
I'm right here...

Sen komşu tanrı,
Uzun geceler bazen,
Kapına vura vura uyandırıyorsam seni
Solumanı seyrek duyduğumdandır...
Bilirim, yalnızsın odanda.
Sana birÅŸey gerekse kimse yok,
Bir yudum su versin aradığında.
Hep dinlerim, yeter ki bir ses edin,
Öyle yakınım sana...

Loving isn't merging, surrendering, uniting with the other. Rather, it's a kind of solitude; of profound aloneness. It induces you to mature and become whole for the sake of your beloved ... to truly love another, you must first wholly love yourself. Love therefore exacts the most demanding claim of all; it both chooses you and pursues you, and reaches out, as if over vast distances, to call and draw you into your now and future self."
-- John VanDyke Wilmerding, ideas put forth inspired by ('after') Rainer Maria Rilke's 'Letters to a Young Poet

The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust. A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky.