The Honey Alone
By Li-Young Lee
Bees come
from out of the sun,
God’s fevered eye.
Any simple child can see.
Tears are gifts
from the mother of God,
as are memory and imagination,
as are seeing, hearing, breathing, thinking, and feeling.
There’s nothing but gifts on this poor earth.
But only the wise child realizes,
after drowsing among the flowers, wasting
an entire summer of his best hours, the bees
are his earliest ancestors,
and he is their honey-loving,
venom-bearing, six-sided-dreaming, I Ching–reciting
descendant and fellow minion of the sun,
he with his pollen-dusted eyelashes and skullcap,
he with his maps
legible only to other
murmuring, winged, round-bellied alchemists.
As for the wicked child who can’t remember
what Virgil said about the vanishing of the bees,
he may have to witness sweetness
disappear from the earth in his lifetime
and never know why.
And what about the child
who doesn’t even know what questions to ask?
Tell him
bees feed on sweat
running down the ribs
and inner arms and thighs
of the mother of God,
and on Her tears,
to make the honey which alone
satisfies the daily hunger of God.
Tell him,
Her tears
are for us to cry.
Notes:
This poem is part of the portfolio honoring Li-Young Lee as the recipient of the 2024 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, a recognition for outstanding lifetime achievement from the Poetry Foundation. Established in 1986 by Ruth Lilly, the prize is one of the most prestigious awards given to living US poets. Read the rest of the portfolio in the October 2024 issue.
Source: Poetry (October 2024)