I Loved You Before I Was Born

1957 –

I loved you before I was born.
It doesn't make sense, I know.

I saw your eyes before I had eyes to see.
And I've lived longing
for your ever look ever since.
That longing entered time as this body.
And the longing grew as this body waxed.
And the longing grows as the body wanes.
The longing will outlive this body.

I loved you before I was born.
It doesn't make sense, I know.

Long before eternity, I caught a glimpse
of your neck and shoulders, your ankles and toes.
And I've been lonely for you from that instant.
That loneliness appeared on earth as this body.
And my share of time has been nothing
but your name outrunning my ever saying it clearly.
Your face fleeing my ever
kissing it firmly once on the mouth.

In longing, I am most myself, rapt,
my lamp mortal, my light
hidden and singing.

I give you my blank heart.
Please write on it
what you wish.

Adore

Li-Young Lee

1957 –

(adore, verb from Latin, adorare,
from ad- ‘to’ + orare- ‘speak, call pray’)

You lie asleep beside me,
one hand on the pillow and cupped
at your mouth, as if to tell a secret.

As if you might say in your sleep
what you could never find
words for awake.

Or as if you called
across a din of other voices,
or the howl of empty space. Calling

because there are no bells
to strike the hours where we live. And I must know
when to kneel and when to rise.
What to praise and what to curse.
I must know how to bless
and how to receive blessing.

One hand on your pillow and cupped
at your mouth,
as if you spoke a word
you’d kept to yourself all day, waiting
for your most unguarded moment
to say, a thought meant for me, meant to be
shared between us this way,
sealed this way, a secret
no voice can carry without destroying,
a word without carriage, except conveyed
in the peace of your body and face,

a word born out of your deepest rest, a word
which only my own deepest breathing
and happiest rest beside you,
face to face, free of thinking, can sustain.

Maybe you had to be asleep
to say what you knew to be true.
Or what you had to say
you might not could bear to hear,
and so you must say so softly
I must close my eyes, I must turn
inward, to where you’ve made a room
and a bed inside me, to receive it.

You say:
We cannot look upon Love’s face without dying.
So we face each other to see Love’s look.
And thus third-person souls
suddenly stand at gaze
and the lover and the beloved,
second- and first-persons,
You and I, eye
to eye, are born.
But such refraction, multiplying gazes, strews
Love’s eye upon the objects of the world,
as upon the objects of our room.

My brush, hairpin, mirror, book,
your loving look finds each of these things
lovable, I can see. Things
by any other measure poor, your look crowns
to make them your heart’s royalty.
Face, blush, breath, eyes, evanescent,
pledged to death, nowhere stored,
Love’s look gathers within its fondling
to adore.

This strewing and gathering
of Love’s face, of Love’s gaze, and only this,
begun in death’s audience, is the founding
action, call it the fundamental
paradise…did I say paradise?
I meant paradox…the fundamental paradox
of the breaths we breathe,
the thoughts we witness,
the kisses we exchange,
and every poem you write.

Folding a Five-Cornered Star So the Corners Meet

Li-Young Lee

1957 –

This sadness I feel tonight is not my sadness.

Maybe it’s my father’s.

For having never been prized by his father.

For having never profited by his son.

This loneliness is Nobody’s. Nobody’s lonely

because Nobody was never born

and will never die.

This gloom is Someone Else’s.

Someone Else is gloomy

because he’s always someone else.

For so many years, I answered to a name,

and I can’t say who answered.

Mister Know Nothing? Brother Inconsolable?

Sister Every Secret Thing? Anybody? Somebody?

Somebody thinks:

With death for a bedfellow,

how could thinking be anything but restless?

Somebody thinks: God, I turn my hand face down

and You are You and I am me.

I turn my hand face up

and You are the I

and I am your Thee.

What happens when you turn your hand?

Lord, remember me.

I was born in the City of Victory,

on a street called Jalan Industri where,

each morning, the man selling rice cakes went by

pushing his cart, its little steamer whistling,

while at his waist, at the end of a red string,

a little brass bell

shivered into a fine, steady seizure.

This sleeplessness is not my sleeplessness.

It must be the stars’ insomnia.

And I am their earthbound descendant.

Someone, Anyone, No One, me, and Someone Else.

Five in a bed, and none of us can sleep.

Five in one body, begotten, not made.

And the sorrow we bear together is none of ours.

Maybe it’s Yours, God.

For living so near to Your creatures.

For suffering so many incarnations unknown to Yourself.

For remaining strange to lovers and friends,

and then outliving them and all of their names for You.

For living sometimes for years without a name.

And all of Your springtimes disheveled.

And all of Your winters one winter.

Three Words

Li-Young Lee

1957 –

God-My-Father gave me three words:
O-My-Love
O-My-God
Holy-Holy-Holy.

God-My-Mother’s wounds will never heal.

God-My-Brother is always alone in the library.

Meanwhile, I can’t remember

how many brothers I have.

God-My-Sister, combing the knots out of my hair,

says that’s because

so many brothers died before I learned to count,

and the ones who died after I acquired arithmetic

so exceeded the number of brothers still alive.

God-My-Father gave me three words to live by.

O-My-Love. O-My-God. Holy-Holy-Holy.

Why won’t God-My-Mother’s wounds heal?

Wounding myself doesn’t cauterize her wounds.

Another wound to her won’t seal her open blooms.

Her voice is a flowering tree struck by lightning.

It goes on greening and flowering,

but come petal-fall, its blossoms dropping

thunder so loud I must cover my ears to hear her.

Meanwhile, God-My-Brother spends every afternoon

alone with the books God-My-Father writes.

Some days he looks up

from a page, wearing the very face of horror.

Ask him what’s the matter

and he’ll stare into your eyes and whisper, “Murder!”

He’ll howl, “Murder!” He’ll scream, “Murder!”

Until he’s hoarse or exhausted.

Or until God-My-Sister sits him down,

combs and braids his hair,

and sorts his dreams.

I’m counting out loud all of my brothers’ names,

the living and the dead, on my fingers.

But the list is long,

leading back to the beginning

of the building of the first human cities,

and I keep losing my place and starting over.

Once, I remembered them all

except the first pair.

God-My-Sister says I must never say those names, never

pronounce the names of that first pair of brothers

within earshot of God-My-Brother.

God-My-Father gave me only three words.

How will I ever learn to talk like other people?

God-My-Mother sings, and her voice

comes like winter to break open the seeds.

God-My-Brother spends most of his time alone.

God-My-Sister is the only one

he’ll ever let touch his face.

God-My-Sister, you should see her.

I have so many brothers,

but forever there will be

only one of her, God-My-Sister.

God-My-Father says from those three words

he gave me, all other words descend, branching.

That still leaves me unfit

for conversation, like some deranged bird

you can’t tell is crying in grief or exultation,

all day long repeating,

“O, my God. O, my love. Holy, holy, holy.”