Li-Young Lee

t’s late. I’ve come

to find the flower which blossoms

like a saint dying upside down.

The rose won’t do, nor the iris.

I’ve come to find the moody one, the shy one,

downcast, grave, and isolated.

see most clearly

your true nature.

Small, auroral, your death is large.

You live, you die with me, in spite

of me, like my sleeping wife.

Always a rose ready

to spill its petals, so that I must pluck

each of them, or crush

the whole thing in my fist.

Or I must cup it

in my hands, adore it,

in silence,

or, more often,

in words.

Still you say nothing.

So keep secret,

I form one word,

then another, one

word

for every moment

which passes, and if I do so until

all words are spoken, then

begin again,

if I adore you, Rose,

with adoration become nonsense become

praise, could I stop our dying?

love your nakedness.

Naked, shy flower, sweet

to my nose, and bitter

to my tongue, among

the dying things

are you and I.

though something about the way they

stand suggests fatigue

Where were you last night

that even the storm didn’t waken you?

Even as I came to your room, closed the windows,

and kissed you, you slept.

Night passed

with interminable rain.

And don’t mistake my stillness

for awe.

It’s just that I don’t want to waken her,

though I’d love to cup her chin in my palms,

Listen now to something human.

I know moments measured

by a kiss, or a tear, a pass of the hand along a loved one’s face.

I know lips that love me,

that return my kisses