Li-Young Lee - Non-Music, Beat Generation

My Father, in Heaven, Is Reading Out Loud

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My father, in heaven, is reading out loud to himself Psalms or news. Now he ponders what he's read. No. He is listening for the sound of children in the yard. Was that laughing or crying? So much depends upon the answer, for either he will go on reading, or he'll run to save a child's day from grief. As it is in heaven, so it was on earth. Because my father walked the earth with a grave, determined rhythm, my shoulders ached from his gaze. Because my father's shoulders ached from the pulling of oars, my life now moves with a powerful back-and-forth rhythm: nostalgia, speculation. Because he made me recite a book a month, I forget everything as soon as I read it. And knowledge never comes but while I'm mid-stride a flight of stairs, or lost a moment on some avenue. A remarkable disappointment to him, I am like anyone who arrives late in the millennium and is unable to stay to the end of days. The world's beginnings are obscure to me, its outcomes inaccessible. I don't understand the source of starlight, or starlight's destinations. And already another year slides out of balance. But I don't disparage scholars; my father was one and I loved him, who packed his books once, and all of our belongings, then sat down to await instruction from his god, yes, but also from a radio. At the doorway, I watched, and I suddenly knew he was one like me, who got my learning under a lintel; he was one of the powerless, to whom knowledge came while he sat among suitcases, boxes, old newspapers, string. He did not decide peace or war, home or exile, escape by land or escape by sea. He waited merely, as always someone waits, far, near, here, hereafter, to find out: is it praise or lament hidden in the next moment?

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Writers: Li-Young Lee

My Father, in Heaven, Is Reading Out Loud

My Father, in Heaven, Is Reading Out Loud

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