37 Quotes by Li-Young Lee

I saw your eyes before I had eyes to see.And I've lived longingfor your every look ever since.The longing entered time as this body.And the longing grew as this body wanes.That longing will outlive this bodyI loved you before I as born.It makes no sense, I know.Long before eternity, I caught a glimpseof your neck and shoulders, your ankles and toes.And I've been lonely for you from that instant.

And of all the rooms in my childhood,God was the largestand most empty.

I buried my father in my heart.Now he grows in me, my strange son, my little root who won’t drink milk, little pale foot sunk in unheard-of night, little clock spring newly wetin the fire, little grape, parent to the future wine, a son the fruit of his own son, little father I ransom with my life

DwellingAs though touching hermight make him known to himself,as though his hand movingover her body might find whohe is, as though he lay inside her, a countryhis hand's traveling uncovered,as though such a country arosecontinually up out of herto meet his hand's setting forth and setting forth.And the places on her body have no names.And she is what's immense about the night.And their clothes on the floor are arrangedfor forgetfulness.

O, to take what we love inside,to carry within us an orchard, to eatnot only the skin, but the shade,not only the sugar, but the days, to holdthe fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite intothe round jubilance of peach. There are days we liveas if death were nowherein the background; from joyto joy to joy, from wing to wing,from blossom to blossom toimpossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

Memory is sweet.Even when it's painful, memory is sweet.

Where is his father?When will his mother be home?How is he going to explainthe moon taken hostage, the searisen to fill up all the mirrors?How is he going to explain the branchesbeginning to grow from his ribs and throat,the cries and trills starting in his own mouth?And now that ancient sorrow between his hips,his body’s ripe listening;the planetknowing itself at last.

Memory is sweet. Even when it’s painful, memory is sweet.

Could it be in longing we are most ourselves?