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Secular or Eclectic
Contemporary

About Li-Young Lee

Timeline (1957 - )

Li-Young Lee, Li-Young Lee poetry, Secular or Eclectic, Secular or Eclectic poetry,  poetry, [TRADITION SUB2] poetry,  poetry

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Original Language
English

Nativity

Themes
  Garden
  Heart
  Sexual Union
  Silence
  Sound

 

Recommended Books

Book of My Nights, by Li-Young Lee
The City in Which I Love You, by Li-Young Lee
Rose, by Li-Young Lee

In the dark, a child might ask, What is the world?
just to hear his sister
promise, An unfinished wing of heaven,
just to hear his brother say,
A house inside a house,
but most of all to hear his mother answer,
One more song, then you go to sleep.

How could anyone in that bed guess
the question finds its beginning
in the answer long growing
inside the one who asked, that restless boy,
the night's darling?

Later, a man lying awake,
he might ask it again,
just to hear the silence
charge him, This night
arching over your sleepless wondering,

this night, the near ground
every reaching-out-to overreaches,

just to remind himself
out of what little earth and duration,
out of what immense good-bye,

each must make a safe place of his heart,
before so strange and wild a guest
as God approaches.

 

 

 

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Ivan M. Granger's original poetry, stories and commentaries are Copyright © 2002 - 2008 by Ivan M. Granger.
All other material is copyrighted by the respective authors, translators and/or publishers.