First World

Transcribed from a recording. No promises on accuracy, especially in relation to punctuation, line breaks, etc.

First World
Li-Young Lee


Sister, we died in childhood, remember?
Into birds we died, and their flying.
Toward all of sky we perished
so completely our mother cried,
Where are my little ones?
Into her voice we died,
that white singing dispersed in day’s greater sentence.
And the days, we disappeared into them
and what they confided,
coming and going, but where?
Of noon we died, and of midnight.
Our longings, the bridges we flung toward the future.
Longings we wove in secret
out of worry, wonder, and expectancy.
And we died of the future,
of calling and mission only we could keep;
leaping into faces, trees, toys, houses, seasons;
sinking into roots, dreams, and books.
Nights beyond the house
we looked up and fell into
the known configurations of stars.
Nights housed and in bed
we closed our eyes and died
into the unknown constellations:
the empty basket, the jeweled stair,
the table set for a guest.
Into our names we died,
then past their precincts,
and would not be persuaded
every world lay kept in other bigger hands.
We who were haunted by suspicions
that where we stood,
there stood all worlds.
We died, and I’ve been sowing
grass and flowers ever since.
We died, and we go on dying.
So where would I look for us,
except in everything I see?