Night Mirror

By Li-Young Lee

Li-Young, don’t feel lonely

when you look up

into great night and find

yourself the far face peering

hugely out from between

a star and a star. All that space

the nighthawk plunges through,

homing, all that distance beyond embrace,

what is it but your own infinity.

And don’t be afraid

when, eyes closed, you look inside you

and find night is both

the silence tolling after stars

and the final word

that founds all beginning, find night,

abyss and shuttle,

a finished cloth

frayed by the years, then gathered

in the songs and games

mothers teach their children.

Look again

and find yourself changed

and changing, now the bewildered honey

fallen into your own hands,

now the immaculate fruit born of hunger.

Now the unequaled perfume of your dying.

And time? Time is the salty wake

of your stunned entrance upon

no name.

Copyright Credit: Li-Young Lee, "Night Mirror" from Book of My Nights. Copyright © 2001 by Li-Young Lee. Reprinted by permission of BOA Editions, Ltd., www.boaeditions.org.

Source: Book of My Nights (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2001)