Because to God must be given
the things that belong to God,
and to the world must be given
the things that belong to the world,
I kiss you with both lips, upper and lower.
Because the world keeps beginning
and ending the same way,
with the slaughter of the innocent,
with the massacre of the blameless,
and there’s not a thing anyone can do.
O, who will roll the stone
from the mouth of the tomb for us?
I kiss you thus,
because the world ended with my mother
walking among the slaughtered
to find her own.
I kiss you thus,
because the world began with my mother
finding among the slaughtered her own
and burying them.
And when I was hungry and crying in her arms,
she stopped my mouth with her breast,
and she fed me her longing at the end of the world.
And when I wouldn’t stop crying
in her arms, she bared her other breast
to my mouth, and she fed me
her longing at the beginning of the world.
It’s like you kissing my mouth
to seal my mouth.
Like you kissing my mouth
to open my mouth.
Like you kissing my mouth
to open my eyes.
Like you kissing my mouth
to close my eyes.
What’s the difference
between these kisses?
Who will roll the stone
from the mouth of the tomb for us?
The round stone. The square tomb.
When we kiss,
when the upper and lower in me
meet the upper and lower in you,
when what is high is humbled
and what is low is raised,
when the round stone of time is rolled away
from the square space of earth,
you and I see what comes
before the beginning and after the end:
an infinite longing
moving over the face of the deep.
This poem has been excerpted from Li-Young Lee’s forthcoming book, I Ask My Mother to Sing.
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