As a result of to God have to be given
the issues that belong to God,
and to the world have to be given
the issues that belong to the world,
I kiss you with each lips, higher and decrease.
As a result of the world retains starting
and ending the identical approach,
with the slaughter of the harmless,
with the bloodbath of the innocent,
and there’s not a factor anybody can do.
O, who will roll the stone
from the mouth of the tomb for us?
I kiss you thus,
as a result of the world ended with my mom
strolling among the many slaughtered
to seek out her personal.
I kiss you thus,
as a result of the world started with my mom
discovering among the many slaughtered her personal
and burying them.
And once I was hungry and crying in her arms,
she stopped my mouth together with her breast,
and she or he fed me her longing on the finish of the world.
And once I wouldn’t cease crying
in her arms, she bared her different breast
to my mouth, and she or he fed me
her longing firstly of the world.
It’s such as you kissing my mouth
to seal my mouth.
Such as you kissing my mouth
to open my mouth.
Such as you kissing my mouth
to open my eyes.
Such as you kissing my mouth
to shut my eyes.
What’s the distinction
between these kisses?
Who will roll the stone
from the mouth of the tomb for us?
The spherical stone. The sq. tomb.
After we kiss,
when the higher and decrease in me
meet the higher and decrease in you,
when what’s excessive is humbled
and what’s low is raised,
when the spherical stone of time is rolled away
from the sq. house of earth,
you and I see what comes
earlier than the start and after the tip:
an infinite longing
shifting over the face of the deep.
This poem has been excerpted from Li-Younger Lee’s forthcoming e book, I Ask My Mom to Sing.
