monday poem #110: Li-Young Lee, "Pillow"

[heresluck]

Late last week I went to the campus library's poetry room and picked out a small stack of books for the next few weeks. I'm really glad I grabbed this one; I've posted Lee's work before, and have been meaning to get around to this particular book for, oh, about four years now.

I chose this poem because two people on my reading list have mentioned insomnia in the last couple of days.
Pillow

There's nothing I can't find under there.
Voices in the trees, the missing pages
of the sea.

Everything but sleep.

And night is a river bridging
the speaking and the listening banks,

a fortress, undefended and inviolate.

There's nothing that won't fit under it:
fountains clogged with mud and leaves,
the houses of my childhood.

And night begins when my mother's fingers
let go of the thread
they've been tying and untying
to touch toward our fraying story's hem.

Night is the shadow of my father's hands
setting the clock for resurrection.

Or is it the clock unraveled, the numbers flown?

There's nothing that hasn't found home there:
discarded wings, lost shoes, a broken alphabet.

Everything but sleep. And night begins

with the first beheading
of the jasmine, its captive fragrance
rid at last of burial clothes.

- Li-Young Lee
from Book of my Nights