Primitive Sorrow
The vagabond-brooding emerald plank of the facedown sea
lying silently
Squints, as though looking at a late summer forest on top of a mountain.
Even on irritatingly long summer days, be merry for the sky at noon.
Sometimes the breath of a suckling infant blows in from there.
On every fence between two houses crouched on the slanted hills
Clamshells hang in nets, rows of teeth laughing from afar.
There’s not a soul on this facedown sandy road from the village.
Listless from night fishing, they are enjoying the sweet liquor of late sleep.
Just a few young women, baskets hoisted on their red-skirted waists,
Cross from tidal stone to tidal stone, hanging seaweed, like a dream from the sea.
At the soft but mournful cry of the cuckoo, heard in sleep,
An old dog stretches out its neck, looks around, and closes its eyes again.
In my breast, my spirit and my entranced gaze fly beyond the horizon with a flock of seagulls
Neither seeing nor being seen, only the building ripples of water-like thoughts.
~~
Chosunitis
Yesterday, today, the breath of every visible person is throttled.
Without joy for so long
Forced laughter makes a home on faces, like melon flowers.
Without even feeling the rage of the winter blizzard
Sweat surges on bracken-like fists. Breath, trying to break through this sealed window to the sky, is throttled.
~~
Extreme
My throbbing spirit struggles—
Yesterday, today, how many times—and writhes.
Unresting time, behind my tears,
Flows, flows, to kill me it flows.
Through the sprinting starlight
When the wind beats the ends of the branches
Why do the crickets look at the silent heavens and cry?
Even thus, all creation remains in the dead of night.
Last year, yesterday, in the midst of that dream
I too came unknowingly thus.
The ground, the ground I trod, how many times forgiven
Oh, it’s thrown me into a tear-worn ravine.
I didn’t know the easy world lies in contentment;
I didn’t know the happy life lies in submission.
Even so, I find a new road and, upon travelling it,
Even on that road my deathbound spirit is lonely.
Rather than seek my way in submission and contentment,
Rather than tie my life to another’s breath,
No, death— death is my path.
A new life in another land, this death!
Even so, treading this path
Oh, that day, that moment, how vexatious.
Even now, the sorrow that remains,
The very thought of it burns and stings.
With this breath that cannot return once it leaves,
Ever I live in a mere empty laugh.
O my sword, make my spirit a stone,
A stone that wears away at the bottom of a stream.
~~
Flower of the Heart
For my anguished Cheongchun companion
From today on, do not conceal it!
Whether happiness or sorrow, anything at all,
Even the anxiety of looking at what is to come—
Oh silent-brooding one, open your throat.
We are somehow wandering horses.
Wet your lips on the springs of dark youth
Dance, if just in the breast of today
Ah, you! Wander not back and forth
Burn up!
Till only ash is left!
Today’s life is only for today
Oh, and night is darkening.
A human is but a ghost.
The moment passes.
Through the unknown space of far-travelled tears,
Hidden in the very core of our breasts
You fair blue flower of the heart, bloom away.
We are but wanderers on a far road, singing the praises of today.
~~
The Song of the Sea
A song that mixes my spirit with the waves,
bringing the feeling of the East Sea
Come to me, oh messenger, come to me
Forget the declarations of kings, tattered with age,
The ramblings of a sick child,
embracing grief, come only to me.
Here is that nature which mocks god,
And youth that never fades.
Cast away the tear-drenched world, come to me as I laugh,
And know that life exists only in change.
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