Li-Young Lee

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.

Always a rose ready

to spill its petals, so that I must pluck

each of them, or crush

the whole thing in my fist.

Or I must cup it

in my hands, adore it,

in silence,

or, more often,

in words.