Debt Accumulates

What love does, I truly do not know.
Whether it can be defined by any path, I do not know that either.
But this much I know—what you have done for me or continue to do,
is so much of my receiving—without my asking!
Only this request: never ask for anything in return for this gift.

Whether I have been able to give you anything,
I do not know. But if I have given something,
please never, even by mistake, try to settle its price.
Does love happen through the cruel ritual of giving and taking? I do not know.

I only know that what I found in you
lives within you, can never be changed.
I do not want to drag it into petty calculations and diminish it.
Just as I lack the worthiness to honor it,
I equally lack the desire to dishonor it.
It is my ultimate sanctuary!

I know this relationship has no name.
I never wanted a name for it,
do not want one even today.
I only want the soul of this relationship not to be lost.
Even if life is painted with brushes dipped in lies on canvas,
the foundation of my feelings remains strong enough still.

I do not know if I have succeeded, but I have constantly found courage
to break down the stubborn wall of feelings accumulated within me.
And that courage—you have supplied it to me.
Your silent presence, staying beside me without response,
your unspoken indulgence toward all my madness,
and constantly looking at my mistakes with forgiving eyes,
keeping me beside you in a kind of silent consent—
for all of this, today I have managed to show that courage!
I have managed to write for you, to speak, to listen to your heart,
without any accounting of wanting and getting.
I am deeply grateful!

I have accumulated so much debt to you
that I can never repay.
No meeting happened, no words were spoken,
no organized conversation took place,
yet I will shelter all your disorganized answers too,
preserve my you in countless drops of salt water.
I wrote the word 'my'—because the person within you
belongs entirely to me alone! There lies the ultimate peace!

Whether arms dealers in this world will ever sell poetry,
I do not know.
But for you, and for myself as well,
I am willing to live, will live,
becoming the reader of all your poems
a thousand times in a thousand ways.