Written by
Li-Young Lee |
I've pulled the last of the year's young onions.
The garden is bare now.
The ground is cold,
brown and old.
What is left of the day flames
in the maples at the corner of my
eye.
I turn, a cardinal vanishes.
By the cellar door, I wash the onions,
then drink from the icy metal spigot.
Once, years back, I walked beside my father
among the windfall pears.
I can't recall
our words.
We may have strolled in silence.
But
I still see him bend that way-left hand braced
on knee, creaky-to lift and hold to my
eye a rotten pear.
In it, a hornet
spun crazily, glazed in slow, glistening juice.
It was my father I saw this morning
waving to me from the trees.
I almost
called to him, until I came close enough
to see the shovel, leaning where I had
left it, in the flickering, deep green shade.
White rice steaming, almost done.
Sweet green peas
fried in onions.
Shrimp braised in sesame
oil and garlic.
And my own loneliness.
What more could I, a young man, want.
Credit: Copyright © 1986 by Li-Young Lee.
Reprinted with the permission of BOA Editions, Ltd.
, www.
boaeditions.
org.
|
Written by
Li-Young Lee |
Sad is the man who is asked for a story
and can't come up with one.
His five-year-old son waits in his lap.
Not the same story, Baba.
A new one.
The man rubs his chin, scratches his ear.
In a room full of books in a world
of stories, he can recall
not one, and soon, he thinks, the boy
will give up on his father.
Already the man lives far ahead, he sees
the day this boy will go.
Don't go!
Hear the alligator story! The angel story once more!
You love the spider story.
You laugh at the spider.
Let me tell it!
But the boy is packing his shirts,
he is looking for his keys.
Are you a god,
the man screams, that I sit mute before you?
Am I a god that I should never disappoint?
But the boy is here.
Please, Baba, a story?
It is an emotional rather than logical equation,
an earthly rather than heavenly one,
which posits that a boy's supplications
and a father's love add up to silence.
Credit: Copyright © 1990 by Li-Young Lee.
Reprinted with the permission of BOA Editions, Ltd.
, www.
boaeditions.
org.
|