Li Young Lee

One of the most beautiful of all the beautiful poems of Li Young Lee is called "The Gift". If you have never read his poetry, you are in for a treat.


The Gift

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.

Li-Young Lee, ©1986. Reproduced from Rose with the kind permission of BOA Editions, Ltd.

I found this on the web at THIS SITE Some of the other sites that are higher in Google are big ads for junk. As if.....

"The Gift" was also printed in "The Sun Magazine", August 2005 issue, and is part of an interview of the author by Ilya Kaminsky and Katherine Towler entitled, "The Saint, The Murderer, All of It".