Li-Young Lee

No easy thing to bear, the weight of sweetness.

Song, wisdom, sadness, joy: sweetness

equals three of any of these gravities.

See a peach bend

t’s late. I’ve come

to find the flower which blossoms

like a saint dying upside down.

The rose won’t do, nor the iris.

I’ve come to find the moody one, the shy one,

downcast, grave, and isolated.

see most clearly

your true nature.

Small, auroral, your death is large.

You live, you die with me, in spite

of me, like my sleeping wife.