Li-Young Lee (born August 19, 1957) is an
American poet. He was born in Jakarta, Indonesia, to Chinese parents. His
maternal great-grandfather was Yuan Shikai, China's first Republican President
who attempted to make himself emperor. Lee's father, who was a personal
physician to Mao Zedong while in China, relocated his family to Indonesia,
where he helped found Gamaliel University. In 1959 the Lee family fled
Indonesia to escape widespread anti-Chinese sentiment and after a five-year
trek through Hong Kong and Japan, they settled in the United States in 1964.
Li-Young Lee attended the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Arizona,
and the State University of New York at Brockport.
From Blossoms
BY LI-YOUNG LEE
From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.
From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.
O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.
There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.