this cutie was taken by Crazyegg95 in 2005 and is from flickr

lizardrinking
for the main blog of poetry, whimsy and maybe beauty, now http://theheartbeatsoftly.wordpress.com/


Saturday 31 January 2009

I ask my mother to sing

She begins, and my grandmother joins her.
Mother and daughter sing like young girls.
If my father were alive, he would play
his accordion and sway like a boat.
I've never been in Peking, or the Summer Palace,
nor stood on the great Stone Boat to watch
the rain begin on Kuen Ming Lake, the picnickers
running away in the grass.
But I love to hear it sung;
how the waterlilies fill with rain until
they overturn, spilling water into water,
then rock back, and fill with more,
Both women have begun to cry.
But neither stops her song.

Li-Young Lee

another favourite to see out the first month of the new year. maybe for morph, because she liked the other one.

and, I'm just going to add this song. I don't know why I never had it on the blog before.

2 comments:

morpho aurora said...

thank you thank you thank you - i have got to get the books - i'm trying not to buy any books right now cuz the TBR pile is up to 83 - i love this.

lizardrinking said...

I've been meaning to get his books since 1994! They aren't available in Australia, so I have to Amazon it. As poetry goes out of print fairly rapidly, I should get my act together. He also wrote an autobiography that I would love to read. The thing I like about good poetry is that it can be read, and reread and reread. I can't do that with a book.

this cutie was taken by Crazyegg95 in 2005 and is from flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/crazyegg95/69994802/

lizardrinking