Li-Young Lee

“Memory revises me.”

“We suffer each other to have each other a while.”

“but in the cityin which I love you,no one comes, no onemeets me in the brick clefts;in the wedged dark,no finger touches me secretly, no mouthtastes my flawless salt,no one wakens the honey in the cells, finds the hummingin the ribs, the rich business in the recesses;hulls clogged, I continue laden”

“My tongue remembers your wounded flavor.The vein in my neckadores you. A swordstands up between my hips,my hidden fleece sends forth its scent of human oil.”

“That's what I want, that kind of recklessness where the poem is even ahead of you. It's like riding a horse that's a little too wild for you, so there's this tension between what you can do and what the horse decides it's going to do.”

“I am that last, thatfinal thing, the bodyin a white sheet listening,”

“Memory is sweet.Even when it's painful, memory is sweet.”

“O, to take what we love inside,to carry within us an orchard, to eatnot only the skin, but the shade,not only the sugar, but the days, to holdthe fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite intothe round jubilance of peach. There are days we liveas if death were nowherein the background; from joyto joy to joy, from wing to wing,from blossom to blossom toimpossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.”

“a bruise, bluein the muscle, youimpinge upon me.As bone hugs the ache home, soI'm vexed to love you, your bodythe shape of returns, your hair a torsoof light, your heatI must have, your openingI'd eat, each momentof that soft-finned fruit,inverted fountain in which I don't see me.”

“And of all the rooms in my childhood,God was the largestand most empty.”

“Have You Prayed” When the windturns and asks, in my father’s voice,Have you prayed?I know three things. One:I’m never finished answering to the dead.Two: A man is four winds and three fires.And the four winds are his father’s voice,his mother’s voice . . .Or maybe he’s seven winds and ten fires.And the fires are seeing, hearing, touching,dreaming, thinking . . .Or is he the breath of God?When the wind turns travelerand asks, in my father’s voice, Have you prayed?I remember three things.One: A father’s loveis milk and sugar,two-thirds worry, two-thirds grief, and what’s left overis trimmed and leavened to make the breadthe dead and the living share.And patience? That’s to endurethe terrible leavening and kneading.And wisdom? That’s my father’s face in sleep.When the windasks, Have you prayed?I know it’s only mereminding myselfa flower is one station betweenearth’s wish and earth’s rapture, and bloodwas fire, salt, and breath long beforeit quickened any wand or branch, any limbthat woke speaking. It’s just mein the gowns of the wind,or my father through me, asking,Have you found your refuge yet?asking, Are you happy?Strange. A troubled father. A happy son.The wind with a voice. And me talking to no one.”

“Moonlight and high wind.Dark poplars toss, insinuate the sea.”

“A door jumpsout from shadows,then jumps away. Thisis what I've come to find:the back door, unlatched.Tooled by insular wind, itslams and slamswithout meaningto and without meaning.”

“Brimming. That's what it is, I want to get to a place where my sentences enact brimming.”