Li-Young Lee

In sixth grade Mrs. Walker

slapped the back of my head

and made me stand in the corner

for not knowing the difference

between persimmons and precision.

How to choose

persimmons.   This is a precision.

Ripe ones are soft and brown-spotted.

Sniff the bottoms.   The sweet one

will be fragrant.   How to eat:

put the knife away, lay down newspaper.

Peel the skin tenderly, not to tear the meat.

Chew the skin, suck it,

and swallow.   Now, eat

the meat of the fruit,

so sweet,

all of it, to the heart.

Donna undresses, her stomach is white.

In the yard, dewy and shivering

with crickets, we lie naked,

face-up, face-down.

I teach her Chinese.

Crickets:     chiu-chiu.   Dew:     I’ve forgotten.

Naked:     I’ve forgotten.

Ni, wo:     you and me.

I part her legs,

remember to tell her

she is beautiful as the moon.

Other words

that got me into trouble were

fight and fright, wren and yarn.

Fight was what I did when I was frightened,

fright was what I felt when I was fighting.

Wrens are small, plain birds,

yarn is what one knits with.

Wrens are soft as yarn.

My mother made birds our of yarn.

I loved to watch her tie the stuff;

a bird, a rabbit, a wee man.

Mrs. Walker brought a persimmon to class

and cut it up

so everyone could taste

a Chinese apple.   Knowing

it wasn’t ripe or sweet, I didn’t eat

but watched the other faces.

My mother said every persimmon has a sun

inside, something golden, glowing,

warm as my face.

Once, in the cellar, I found two wrapped in newspaper,

forgotten and not yet ripe.

I took them and set both on my bedroom windowsill,

where each morning a cardinal

sang, The sun, the sun.

Finally understanding

he was going blind,

my father sat up all one night

waiting for a song, a ghost.

I gave him the persimmons,

swelled, heavy as sadness,

and sweet as love.

This year, in the muddy lighting

of my parents’ cellar, I rummage, looking

for something I lost.

My father sits on the tired wooden stairs,

black cane between his knees,

hand over hand, gripping the handle.

He’s so happy that I’ve come home.

I ask how his eyes are, a stupid question.

All gone, he answers.

Under some blankets, I find a box.

Inside the box I find three scrolls.

I sit beside him and untie

three paintings by my father:

Hibiscus leaf and a white flower.

Two cats preening.

Two persimmons, so full they want to drop from the cloth.

He raises both hands to touch the cloth,

asks, Which is this?

This is persimmons, Father.

Oh, the feel of the wolftail on the silk,

the strength, the tense

precision in the wrist.

I painted them hundreds of times

eyes closed.   These I painted blind.

Some things never leave a person:

scent of the hair of the one you love,

the texture of persimmons,

in your palm, the ripe weight.

From ROSE (BOA Editions, LTD, 1986)

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.

From ROSE (BOA Editions, LTD, 1986)

Choose a quiet

place, a ruins, a house no more

a house,

under whose stone archway I stood

one day to duck the rain.

The roofless floor, vertical

studs, eight wood columns

supporting nothing,

two staircases careening to nowhere, all

make it seem

a sketch, notes to a house, a three-

dimensional grid negotiating

absences,

an idea

receding into indefinite rain,

or else that idea

emerging, skeletal

against the hammered sky, a

human thing, scoured seen clean

through from here to an iron heaven.

A place where things

were said and done,

there you can remember

what you need to

remember.   Melancholy is useful.   Bring yours.

There are no neighbors to wonder

who you are,

what you might me doing

walking there,

stopping now and then

to touch a crumbling brick

or stand in a doorway

framed by the day.

No one has to know you

thing of another doorway

that framed the rain or news of war

depending on which way you faced.

You think of sea-roads and earth-roads

you traveled once, and always

in the same direction:   away.

You think

of a woman, a favorite

dress, your old father’s breasts

the last time you saw him, his breath,

brief, the leaf

you’ve torn from a vine and which you hold now

to your cheek like a train ticket

or a piece of cloth, a little hand or a blade –

it all depends

on the course of your memory.

It’s a place

for those who own no place

to correspond to ruins in the soul.

It’s mine.

It’s all yours.

From THE CITY IN WHICH I LOVE YOU (BOA Editions, LTD, 1990)