Li-Young Lee

Li-Young Lee (born August 19, 1957) is an American poet.

He was born in Jakarta, Indonesia, to Chinese parents. His maternal grandfather was Yuan Shikai, China’s first Republican President, who attempted to make himself emperor.

Lee’s father, who was a personal physician to Mao Zedong while in China, relocated his family to Indonesia, where he helped found Gamaliel University. His father was exiled and spent 19 months in an Indonesian prison camp in Macau. In 1959 the Lee family fled the country to escape anti-Chinese sentiment and after a five-year trek through Hong Kong and Japan, they settled in the United States in 1964. Li-Young Lee attended the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Arizona, and the State University of New York at Brockport.

ANY WONDER
Li-Young Lee

Before
the serpent was a serpent,
she was my mother.

Living in time made me almost forget.
But I didn’t forget.

She bore me into the world
from the splendor of her body with a heave,
from the sanctum of her maw with a groan,

and as she found me pleasing,
she called me Lover,
and she nursed me, singing,
Honey for the bear,
meat for the tiger,
an egg for the snake,
and milk for my baby.

Any wonder
I’ve been hungry and thirsty
all of my life.

Someday, I shall return
to the dark of my mother’s mouth,
where all rivers meet.

Before the serpent was a serpent,
he was my father.

He brought me forth from the ancient thorn
lodged between his cloudy eye
and his incendiary eye,

and as he found me pleasing,
he called me Beloved.

And because I was no bigger
than the tip of his little finger,
he carried me on the wide brim of his hat by day.

At night, I slept in the spiral of his ear,
that gate to the unseen heard,
the unthought known,
and the garden of nutmeg.

Any wonder I’ve lived most of my life
insomniac by night
and distracted by eternity all day.

One day, I shall return
to rest beneath the green stem finding root
between my father’s eyes,
his figuring eye and his eye of the void.

The offspring of her mouth
and of his wound.

The outcome of her darkness
and of his hurt.

Her brooding and his injury.
Her looming and his harm.
Her dwelling and his damage.
Her river and his tree.

Surrendering to divisible time,
I almost forgot.
But I never forgot.

Any wonder
I set out on earth
to learn to sing.

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THE GIFT
Li-Young Lee

To pull the metal splinter from my palm
my father recited a story in a low voice.
I watched his lovely face and not the blade.
Before the story ended, he’d removed
the iron sliver I thought I’d die from.

I can’t remember the tale,
but hear his voice still, a well
of dark water, a prayer.
And I recall his hands,
two measures of tenderness
he laid against my face,
the flames of discipline
he raised above my head.

Had you entered that afternoon
you would have thought you saw a man
planting something in a boy’s palm,
a silver tear, a tiny flame.
Had you followed that boy
you would have arrived here,
where I bend over my wife’s right hand.

Look how I shave her thumbnail down
so carefully she feels no pain.
Watch as I lift the splinter out.
I was seven when my father
took my hand like this,
and I did not hold that shard
between my fingers and think,
Metal that will bury me,
christen it Little Assassin,
Ore Going Deep for My Heart.
And I did not lift up my wound and cry,
Death visited here!
I did what a child does
when he’s given something to keep.
I kissed my father.

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