I ask my mother to sing poem analysis

25 poems by Li-Young Lee

1. THE WEIGHT OF SWEETNESS

2. Early in the Morning

3. Eating Alone

4. The Gift

5. A Story

6. The Hammock

7. Mnemonic

8. From Blossoms

9. Pillow

10. Mnemonic

11. The Hour and What Is Dead

12. Night Mirror 13. Little Father

14. ONE HEART

15. Station

16. Black Petal

17. From Blossoms

18. A Hymn to Childhood

19. Falling: The Code

20. Nocturne

21. Eating Together

22. I Ask My Mother to Sing

23. This Hour and What Is Dead

24. Immigrant Blues

25. Arise, Go Down

1. THE WEIGHT OF SWEETNESS

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 the branch and strain the stem until it snaps. Hold the peach, try the weight, sweetness and death so round and snug in your palm. And, so, there is The weight of memory:

Windblown, a rain-soaked bough shakes, showering the man and the boy. They shiver in delight, and the father lifts from his son’s cheek one green leaf fallen like a kiss.

The good boy hugs a bag of peaches his father has entrusted to him. Now he follows his father, who carries a bagful in each arm. See the look on the boy’s face as his father moves faster and farther ahead, while his own steps flag, and his arms grow weak, as he labors under the weight of peaches.

2. Early in the Morning

While the long grain is softening

in the water, gurgling

over a low stove flame, before

the salted Winter Vegetable is sliced

for breakfast, before the birds,

my mother glides an ivory comb

through her hair, heavy

and black as calligrapher’s ink.

She sits at the foot of the bed.

My father watches, listens for

the music of comb

against hair.

My mother combs,

pulls her hair back

tight, rolls it

around two fingers, pins it

in a bun to the back of her head.

For half a hundred years she has done this.

My father likes to see it like this.

He says it is kempt.

But I know

it is because of the way

my mother’s hair falls

when he pulls the pins out.

Easily, like the curtains

when they untie them in the evening.

18. Falling: The Code

1.

Through the night

the apples

outside my window

one by one let go

their branches and

drop to the lawn.

I can’t see, but hear

the stem-snap, the plummet

through leaves, then

the final thump against the ground.

Sometimes two

at once, or one

right after another.

During long moments of silence

I wait

and wonder about the bruised bodies,

the terror of diving through air, and

think I’ll go tomorrow

to find the newly fallen, but they

all look alike lying there

dewsoaked, disappearing before me.

2.

I lie beneath my window listening

to the sound of apples dropping in

the yard, a syncopated code I long to k