Back
to
Heaven
Translated
from the Korean by
Brother
Anthony of Taizé
Young-Moo
Kim
Contents
When Ch'ŏn Sang-Pyŏng left this world on April
28, 1993, it was a long-rehearsed departure. He had already left the world a
first time in his childhood, when he fell over a cliff but survived after being
caught in the branches of a tree. A second departure came in 1967, when the
agents of the National Security Agency (KCIA) whisked him away to the dreaded
cellars of their building in central Seoul. There he was subjected to torture
by water, and also by electric-shock applied to his genitals. His name had been
found in the address-book of a friend from university days, a friend who was
now accused of being a communist spy after visiting the North Korean embasy in
East Berlin. After six months in detention, he was finally freed, having
nothing to confess except the fact that he had friends. As a result of the
electrical torture, the poet would never be able to have children.
Born in early 1930 in Japan, he returned to
Korea with his family in 1945 and resumed his interrupted schooling at Masan.
The first of his poems to be published was the poem "Rivers" that
appeared in the monthly review Munye in 1949, when the poet was still at
school. By 1952 he was established as a poet, with recognition from already
reputed writers. By this time he was studying at Seoul National University.
After finishing his studies there, he worked for a while in Pusan. In addition
to writing poems, he had also already begun to compose literary essays that
were published in various periodicals. They constitute the other important
aspect of his life's work as a writer.
Not very long after being tortured, Ch'ŏn
Sang-Pyŏng seemed really to have died. Deeply traumatized by the violence he
had undergone, he began to roam about, drinking wildly until at last, in 1971,
he disappeared. Months passed, his friends and relatives searched for him
everywhere to no avail. They could only conclude that he had died and been
buried somewhere anonymously, unknown. In sorrow, they collected the poems they
could find, and published a posthumous memorial volume.
Ch'ŏn Sang-Pyŏng's career may have been marked
by a series of deaths, it is also a story of multiple resurrections. Suddenly
news came that he was alive after all, interned in the Seoul municipal asylum
where he had been taken after he had collapsed in the street. The only things he
could recall at that time were his name, and the fact that he was a poet.
Perhaps the second memory was the thread that kept him alive.
Deeply withdrawn though he was, Ch'ŏn Sang-Pyŏng
showed a clear improvement after being visited by Mok Sun-Ok, the younger
sister of one of his university friends. The doctor told her that she could
help him by her visits and that if all went well he might be ready to return to
life in the outside world after a couple of months. So Mok Sun-Ok came to visit
her brother's friend every day, until he was as ready as he ever would be to
come back to life in society. Only it was clear that he would hardly be able to
fend for himself on his own. He had the heart of a child, and a child's
fragility. Ch'ŏn Sang-Pyŏng and Mok Sun-Ok were married in 1972, a marriage
that endured through twenty years of sometimes terrible hardship and struggle.
The poet's love of company, his simple trust,
and his enjoyment of a drink and a smoke, did not answer the question of how
the newly-weds were to feed and house themselves. Friends helped Mok Sun-Ok
open a café in a small room in the Insadong neighborhood of Seoul, much frequented
by artists, writers, journalists and intellectuals. The name given to the café
was Kwi-ch'ŏn "Back to heaven," the title of one of Ch'ŏn's
early lyrics. The couple lived in tiny rooms in an old house on the outskirts
of Ŭijŏngbu, to the north of Seoul.
By 1988, years of drinking had eroded the poet's
liver until at last a doctor told Mok Sun-Ok that her husband had reached the
end of the trail, that he would never recover and she must prepare for the
inevitable end. Another doctor, a friend of theirs, with a small clinic in the
town of Ch'unch'ŏn, twenty or thirty miles outside of Seoul, decided to try to
help. Ch'ŏn Sang-Pyŏng was admitted there and for the following months Mok
Sun-Ok took the bus every evening to be with him. She has written how,
returning to Seoul from her daily visits, she used to pray silently in the bus:
"God! Not yet. Give him another five years, please. Five more years."
Amazingly, strength returned and the poet was
able to leave the clinic to resume a measure of normal living. For another five
years. In the space of this reprieve he saw the publication of new volumes of
poetry and of essays. Until at last he made his final journey Back to Heaven on
April 28, 1993. People opening the door of the Insadong café no longer hear the
poet's raucous voice call from his customary seat in a corner: "Come on
in, there's room, there's room!" Even when, with fifteen customers, the
room was completely full.
Ch'ŏn Sang-Pyŏng enjoyed the rare privilege of
surviving to see his poems published posthumously; more than that, his first,
"posthumous" volume of poems was followed by several other volumes
published in his lifetime. In 1993 a second, this time truly posthumous, volume
of poems appeared.
*
* *
What kind of poetry did Ch'ŏn Sang-Pyŏng write?
Esssentially lyric verse echoing his private perceptions of the world around
him. Often it is the world of nature, with which he feels a deep harmony. The
world of human society is more complex. There are poems celebrating the people
he feels at ease with, his friends, his wife. There are less obvious references
to the many people who live in ways quite foreign to him: people busy in
pursuit of wealth, for example.
The perception of reality out of which the
poet's works spring is deeply human, sensitive and sometimes almost mystical.
With the passage of time "God" figures more and more explicitly in
his poems, with echoes of the passages in the Gospels where Jesus welcomes the
poor and excludes the rich. Ch'ŏn Sang-Pyŏng's heart was to the end the heart
of a child and his response to life is childlike, his faith too is expressed
with a childlike lightness.
As is usual in modern Korean poetry, the
movement of the lines is very free, grammar is loose, the poems benefit greatly
from being read aloud. They are much closer to the speaking voice than is
sometimes the case with Korean literature, rooted as it is in a scholarly
tradition of the written text. Using mostly a very simple vocabulary, the
experience at the core of each poem is usually conveyed to the sympathetic
reader as a shared emotion. It may be a wry smile, as when the poet is stranded
in Seoul without the train fare to go to visit his parents' tombs and he wonders
what he will do if he has to find the fare to go to heaven. Or it may be an
intense happiness. Or the gloom of a rainy day.
Some poems are so simple, that over-sophisticated critics feel insulted by the apparent childishness. Poetry is supposed to be high art, deeply serious, and they complain; "But this could have been written in a nursery school." Only it wasn't. There are others who agree with the students' and general readers' opinion that Ch'ŏn Sang-Pyŏng was almost the only utterly honest writer of his generation. They are not wrong. Everything he wrote strikes one as deeply authentic. Most of what he wrote could not have been written by anyone else.
His biography suggests a life steeped in poverty
and pain. Yet poem after poem proclaims, sometimes explicitly: "I'm the
happiest man in the world." These are songs of a man who counts his
blessings and knows exactly what they are, who relishes life and refuses any
thought of running after shadows. Shadows there were, of course, death being
the darkest one. Death and human mortality are the realities symbolized in the
flow of the river towards the sea in the poet's first published poem,
"Rivers." Only we're not dead so long as we're alive, and Ch'ŏn
writes as a man alive, so alive that his heart is wide open to the song of
every bird, the fall of every leaf.
The poems illustrate perfectly what Christ meant
when he said that the poor were blessed. The rich complain about all they don't
have; the poor rejoice intensely in the few simple things they have; a bunch of
wild flowers is enough. The rich are blind to what makes poem after poem here
so compelling: the beauty of the world, the beauty of being alive in this
beautiful world. These poems are mostly very beautiful because they do not try
to be. They let the beauty that the poet has perceived shine through their
fabric of finely spun words.
The poet knew well enough how very ugly the
world of human society could be, his poems are a witness to the victory of art
over that. The vagabond poet has been a popular literary figure at least since
François Villon roamed and played in 15th century Paris. 20th century Seoul had
a poet whose games were closer to sorrow and pain than Villon's perhaps, but
whose reserves of innocence were greater too. A happy man, indeed, and the
happier for having had such a wonderful wife to look after him.
Ch'ŏn Sang-Pyŏng would have been delighted, if
amused and a little surprised, at the thought that only a few months after his
death his wife would have published a splendid book of memoirs about their life
together, later translated into English as My Husband the Poet. Then a
writer composed a play portraying the main events of their life, with readings
of some of the poems serving as the Chorus, that drew crowded houses for
several weeks in a Seoul theater. The popular response to the play Kwi-chŏn
is the clearest sign, together with the enduring sales of his books, that Ch'ŏn
Sang-Pyŏng is no "dead poet," despite having a tomb on a hill in
Ŭijŏngbu. He has gone Back to Heaven inside many hearts, and as he promised in
that most beautiful poem, Kwi-ch'ŏn, "Back to Heaven," written
many years ago:
I'll go back to heaven again.
At the end of my outing to this beautiful world
I'll go and say: That was beautiful. . . .
There is the secret of his life's work. He teaches those ready to listen that the world is beautiful, that life is beautiful, and that we ought every day to be glad.
*
* *
The poems selected and translated here are among
those most loved and admired by Korean readers; the selection was made for an
edition published by Mirae-sa Publishing in Seoul in 1991. Most are youthful
works, written in the 1950s and 1960s and included in Sae
"Bird," that first "posthumous" collection published in
five hundred copies by his friends in 1971, which was withdrawn when the poet
was found to be alive.
The first volume supervised by the poet was
published in 1978 under the title Ch'umak-esŏ "In a tavern."
It contained the fifty-nine poems found in Sae, but arranged in a
different order, followed by fifty others, mostly written after Ch'ŏn
Sang-Pyŏng's return to life. The first two sections of the present volume
follow the order of Ch'umak-esŏ, distinguishing between the poems found
in Sae and those added later. Some eighty of the poems included in this
selection thus date from the earlier period of Ch'n's career, thirty of
the poems found in Ch'umak-esŏ having not been translated.
The volumes published after this always offer a
mixture of new poems and old favorites. The collection published in 1984 had
the punning title Ch'ŏn Sang-Pyŏng-ŭn Ch'ŏnsang Siin-ida " Ch'ŏn
Sang-Pyŏng is a real poet." Twenty poems and the "Notes on my poems"
are taken from that collection. Chŏsung ka-nŭn de-to yŏbi-ga tŭnda-myŏn
"If there's a fare to pay when you pass away," was published in 1987,
its title drawn from the poem "À la Tu Fu." Six poems are included
from that volume, and just two from Yonom yonom yo yipp-ŭn nom "You
lovely fellow, you!" published in 1991.
There is a general consensus among Korean literary critics
that the later works do not stand comparison with the early lyrics. They are
often spontaneous echoes of an experience, something thought or heard. The
style tends to be rather prosaic. Yet in terms of human interest, as opposed to
formal beauty, the later poems sometimes appeal more to the general reader. The
limitations of the present selection, heavily biased towards the early works,
should be recognized, out of fairness to the poet's total reputation.
When the title of a poem is followed by an asterisk (*)
readers will find a note on that poem among the notes at the end of the book.
If only I had a flute.
The moon is unmoving
the moonlight bright alone with the wind . . .
tonight with all insect sounds stilled
where, alas, can that flute be
that goes so well with my heart's sad melody?
In times past
great parties were held in towers to view the moon
where the court musician would play his flute
while pretty court ladies would dance;
I wish I had that flute.
If it can't be seen, still
tonight
I long at least to touch that flute.
Where can it be?
Everyone said that tree was rotten. But I told them
that the tree was no rotten tree. That night I dreamed a dream.
In that dream I saw the tree flourishing, putting out
branches as if it meant to touch the blue sky.
I called the people back again and told them that the
tree was no rotten tree.
That tree is not rotten.
Sheer
yearning
transformed
the seagull
into a
cloud.
In the blue
sea's name
it dyed its
white wings in the sky,
evidently
joyful;
then the
sea,
with its so
bright breast
flowed after
the cloud to distant lands.
Many times
many times
it was
splendor flying high.
It was a
beautiful heart.
I wonder
why I'm standing
on this
dreary road
where
there's not a single tree?
A long road
not a new
road
mile after
mile of road, of red dirt road
like dusk
like
tomorrow
I must be
waiting for something.
Under the
bright moonlight
a reed and
I
stood side
by side in silence.
Anxiously
we gazed at one other
calming our
distress
in the gusting
wind.
In the
bright moonlight
the reed
and I
were both
drenched with tears.
No words
could
express
the fading
of the dusk.
As I
watched that evening and that hour
I thought
about
tomorrow.
Spring's
gone
the twilight
burns red then, ah, fades
yesterday
and now today as well.
I want to
know
I want to
know
why, very
soon,
once having
hewn that sky
I'll have
to inscribe there my obscurity.
Soon the wind will blow from the northern hills
snow will
fly; winter's coming.
Then on
snowy days
I'll walk
Seoul's snow-covered streets,
longing for
spring.
Even when I
had nothing at all
I always
had
this
"next"
this dawn,
this "next."
I reckon
this absolute irresistible urge
is all my
own.
Soon, tomorrow,
my dragging
steps transformed
into
something hotter than fire
my hope
will impose
on the world a heavier burden
than the
surf, than all the oceans.
So this
"next"
like
Seoul's streets on snowy days
is the road
to my world's ocean
The way rivers all flow into the sea
is not the only reason I've been weeping
all day long
up on the hill.
It's not the only reason I've been blooming
in longing like a sunflower
all night long
up on the hill.
The reason I'm weeping for sorrow like an animal
up on the hill
is not only because of the way
rivers all
just flow into the sea.
No sound
for the
day's sake
this
afternoon. . .
Yet
if I listen
hard
I'm calling
for mother
I'm crying.
Up in the sky
drifting
far and near
like a
seagull
grief flies
on, flies on.
That
happened
one such day.
happened
one such day.
Then
this quiet
afternoon
it came to
me like water
and made me
cry.
If I listen
hard
I can hear
a voice
calling for
mother.
I keep
gazing, gazing and gazing again
at that sky
so clear and blue up there.
It's not
just blue.
Sometimes
I'm riven with loneliness
as petals
fall unceasingly and
out in the
fields I open my arms
one cloud
drifts past
now seen
now unseen
the fresh
green leaves of March April May
and where's
the moon come rising from?
Do the
stars look down at me each night?
I keep
gazing, gazing and gazing again
at that sky
so clear and blue up there.
It's not
just blue.
There's
someone on fire
inside that
tiny flame,
in pain,
hot, burning.
Legs, trunk,
bones, skin, all turning to ash.
That
person's a stranger to me.
Oh! My face
and nose
and mouth and guts
and lungs
and stones
are all
turning into ash!
*
A leafy
afternoon; over there
a woman in
traditional dress lifts a hand to her ear.
If there's
even a tiny black mole on the lobe,
it turns
into the shadow
of a tiny
petal fallen on stone stairs.
A floating
cloud meets the storm
from
Chunghwa Hall, then vanishes without return.
My
apologetic disease becomes a light
never again
to be seen on these lawns and sandy paths
and on the
dumb pines
greets
passers-by I do not know.
So drunk
with folly I cannot drink wine.
I go to the
pond and toss in a stone;
its sinks
endlessly.
I go and
sit down
on a bench
in the shade of the pines.
There I get
drowsy and close my eyes.
The whole
park is a stone sinking into a pond.
through
many thousands of years
one star
then two then three stars float.
Old men
and
children
have all
passed away but
one young
man is asleep tonight after writing a poem . . .
The day beyond
the day I
die
lonely in
death after lonely living
birds will
sing as new day dawns and petals unfold
on my
soul's empty ground.
I'll be one
bird
alighting
on ditches and branches
when the
song of loving
and living
and beauty
is at its
height.
Season full
of emotion
week of
sorrow and joy
in the gaps
between knowing, not knowing, forgetting
bird
pour out
that antiquated song.
One bird
sings of how
there are
good things
in life
and bad
things too.
After
chattering all day long
saying
things
now I fall
asleep . . .
Sea silent,
I fall asleep
and dream
dreams
like the
letters a son gets from an aged father.
All the
words I said today
seem to be
embracing and making love
to the
screams of those already dead.
In those dreams,
I mean . . . .
I sing for
each day's spoken words.
Ah, my
song, my song!
At night,
instead of sorrow, my song falls asleep.
That bird
can't fly or sing,
it can't
even move.
It must be
deeply wounded.
St Francis
of Assissi preached
of grace
to the
birds
but that
bird seems just as sick as before.
The sunset
and dusk on the fields long centuries ago
are making
snow fall
here today.
It's
snowing . . .
For the happy child that died within me long before the blade fell on my neck (Jean Genet)
From
alleyway to alleyway
and now in
this tiny tavern.
Pour me one
more glass, old dear.
Evening
dusk's a poor poet's reward . . .
Is it
normal, I wonder, for this world to appear
as smooth
as it does to troubled eyes?
Pour me one
more glass, old dear.
Hazy things
are solemn.
At the
entry to the alley
the night
is growing darker with awkward steps
but behind
the old woman's back
looms the
hill beside my home village
and on that
hill
unseasonable
winter snow is falling heavily.
Beyond that
hill,
on the
lonely ridge with the local god's shrine
above that
ridge,
hurling
lumps of soft snow, the kids are playing.
The
children are looking very cheerful.
They look
infinitely cheerful.
Before it
eyes are
quite useless
in the
effort to see the utter stillness imprinted
on the tip
of branches long against the winter sky . . .
What is
meant by seeing?
What form
can the bridge have that spans
the
infinitely subtle difference
between what
is and what is not?
Won't that
thing
that pecks
at blood-tinged sunbeams
gently
spreading feathers over ruined visions
vanish as
suddenly as it came?
So as the
wind blows soundlessly
one bird is
barely maintaining
the perfect
balance
between
this sky and that.
1.
The loneliest man in Seoul came to Seoul's loneliest park. All the time repeating that there's nothing so wrong with being lonely. . . . at more or less the same time the man seemed vaguely to realize what was bringing the cherry trees there into bloom. It's a sobering thing, like seeing all the hills from that one bench under the flowering branches. Ah, loneliness, or solitude, tell me you too sometimes experience this kind of dazzling moment, these times of song.
2.
Within those cherry petals my father, who died ten
years ago, is assuming his most loving expression and pose, while my niece, who
died at the age of six, is laughing in green at the edge of freshly blooming
baby flowers. Mother, mother, where are you?
- in the "Apollo" tearoom
It's been
so long since I heard any music. It's as though a wise shade has followed the
sunlight spreading over my soul's glades. Perhaps the shade is thicker and more
appetizing.
Where has that bird gone, I wonder? Is it crossing beyond the dales? Has it rented my heart out and gone on an overseas cruise?
Come back, bird! Not to sing as you fly! But to ransack
this shade's lonely splendor!
*
On a
cloudless day
the sky
revealed itself
from time
to time in profile.
Its one
clear eye
steadily
gazing down
was fixed
on your tomb.
At the
farthest limit
of the
grassy mound
a flower
grew, boasting of its solitude.
Shin
Dong-yŏp!
That's the
kind of man you were.
No matter
for how short a moment
you left
everything there
and off you
went.
Off away
to the land
of glory!
Above
autumn skies as bright as today's,
one flight
above, a cloud goes drifting.
Here I am
at present waiting
right in
front of the church gate
to have my
shoes shined after the policeman
on traffic
duty at the gate.
It would be
a pity if I were less considerate
than that
policeman.
Above
autumn skies as bright as today's,
one flight
above, a cloud goes drifting.
1.
He went
walking on,
from alley
to street,
from
side-street to main road.
Stores and
buildings
lined up
side by side in rows.
Heedless,
he went walking on.
How far is
he going, you ask?
To the
woods, to the sea.
Heading for
the stars
unresting
he goes walking on.
2.
By day to a
teashop, or a bar,
at night to
an inn.
My paths
always used
to be the same . . .
Yet
today I'm
taking another path.
How
beautiful the rejoinders of youthful love.
Where shall
we go?
Nowhere
special. Why?
How
beautiful the rejoinders of youthful love.
I love you!
I hate you,
no matter what you say!
On snowy
days love drifts.
On rainy
days time flows.
With my
stomach full after eating lunch
I'm writing
this letter to the once hungry me.
It used to
happen sometimes.
You won't
be upset, will you?
There were
times of luxury too, you know.
I hope you
won't forget that.
I was sure
of tomorrow
for twenty
years!
Now that
I'm full
I'm worried
I might forget all that
so I'm
writing
this letter.
In yonder isle of
death is also the tomb of my youth (Nietsche)
A place
where
ancient stillness
walks the
sea.
A place
where mists
flow thick
like oil
ablaze.
A secluded
uninhabited
place.
A fresh
grave
washed by
the waves.
Although
for today there was no night
the moon
came up,
the stars
were twinkling bright.
Although
there's no day with only grief
once again
the sun rose,
the morning
dawned.
I'm not
utter innocence
but thanks
to that one chrysanthemum
standing in
a cup on the table
I'm all
aglow.
If I go
that way again
spring
comes
if I pass
beyond the hill
summer light shines.
On the way
back
autumn
leaves are drifting
and winter
inevitably
scatters
great flakes of snow.
The love
letters
I wrote to
you
the
writings of love
have
likewise turned into great rivers flowing vast.
*
In the early hours before sunrise, taking the wings of
the pale grey dawn, I set off for Sajik Park, gnawing dejection as I went. Down
an almost deserted street a little girl, only three or four, was standing
crying outside one house's front gate, dressed in her nightclothes. She was
sobbing dreadfully, sobbing dreadfully. I wonder why? Why is this little child crying here outside this big house's
front door, complete with its guard-dog, pressing the gate with her glass-like
hand? Perhaps she's being punished
for wetting her bed? All the time looking back, I cannot ignore her.
Little girl, why are you crying? Because you've just
learned something about life? Because something sad has happened, and you've
experienced how very much painful things hurt? Yet this fellow here, aimlessly
wandering up the hill in the dawn, isn't crying. . .
Little girl, you've got a mother whose hand's soon
going to open that gate for sure. This fellow here has no door for any such
love to open. Don't cry, little child! After all, look at me: I'm not crying .
. .
What kind of music is this? A quiet whisper close
beside my pillow in the early hours. I think the composer of this tune, that I
used to listen to with tears, loved one girl his whole life long. It may be
that her name was Clara. Wasn't she his teacher's wife? One century, two
centuries of time have rolled by and yet it looks as though his love is still
not over. Early this morning it's come to the heart of this messed-up wreck
living in a distant land and weeps.
*
I'll go
back to heaven again.
Hand in
hand with the dew
that melts
at a touch of the dawning day,
I'll go
back to heaven again.
With the
dusk, together, just we two,
at a sign
from a cloud after playing on the slopes
I'll go
back to heaven again.
At the end
of my outing to this beautiful world
I'll go
back and say: That was beautiful. . . .
A lonely
spot on a hilltop ridge
with tiny
daisies.
There's no
wind,
yet somehow
they're fluttering.
Autumn
will come
again.
Will this
moment come again?
My lonely
heart and yours
chastely
united
as now . .
.
Do you see
the daytime starlight
sleeping
quietly like a baby
near the
roof
the white
clothes hanging by the window
near the
garden wall . . .
Do you see
the daytime starlight
like that
spinning world
beside
love's gestures
the
wearisome waiting
alongside
of sorrow . . .
Do you see
the daytime starlight
speeding
pole-wards
over
deserts
over rocks
over waves .
. .
A bird
traverses
all the daytime starlight valleys
singing.
1.
Today's
wind is leaving
tomorrow's
wind is beginning to blow.
Bye-bye.
Today's
been far too dull.
Like baby
rats mewling in a backyard cesspit
tomorrow's
wind is beginning to blow.
2.
Hugging the
sky
embracing
the sea
I draw on a
cigarette.
Hugging the
sky
embracing
the sea
I drink a
draught of water.
Someone sat
for a while beside the well
then went
on, leaving a fag-end behind . . .
- Bird
Between the countless branches where you lingered a
while in days gone by, the daylight departs and darkness looms. It's cold. The
wind comes bleakly gusting from the lips of one near death, while the hands of
the clock that has never told the right time are drowsing near midnight.
Seasons are not things that come for those who wait the longest.
And you, little bird. . . .
- Bird
1.
This thin
smile lurking smug on my lips
is a bridge
composed of a single thread
deftly
slung at the brink of life and death.
A bird goes
flying up that bridge.
Fraternity
and resolution, with courage too,
wafting on
just such pinions . . .
Not a
breeze furtively shaking the leaves
but rather
a wind that touches the roots,
the
sunbeams streaming from this breast.
How often
will my lips smile bright at the hills
along the
meadow path
taken
today, and tomorrow too . . .
2.
My friend
come to
this sun-shimmering hill.
Though you
have to cross many oceans
to pass
from hill to hill, still
come to
this sun-shimmering hill
my friend .
. .
I feel
fairly happy this morning,
with a cup
of coffee, enough fags in the pack,
breakfast
eaten and still the bus fare left over.
I feel
fairly gloomy this morning,
though I'm
not short of small change,
because I
have to worry about tomorrow.
Poverty's
my full-time job
but if I
can hold up my head in this sunshine
it's
because the sunshine has no bank account either.
My past and
future
my dear
sons and daughters,
sometimes
come to my grass-grown grave and say:
Here sleeps
a life that took pain in its stride.
Let the fresh
breeze blow . . .
I sat
facing a sixty-year old man.
Don't
worry. Relax.
But still, what must I do?
We'll just
have to wait and see . . .
My
completely unseen liver
has dared
to stage a coup d'état.
There's not
much that little fellow can do,
yet a life
still eager to live comes home to me.
I don't
much like coup d'états.
I ask the
old doctor
how to deal
with it.
Policies
depend on situations!
Asking if I
have a soul
is like asking if I exist or not.
Can you see
a hill and say it's not there?
My soul!
Run wild.
My body's
movements
are my
soul's disguise, that's all.
When I'm
gloomy on rainy days,
it's my
soul that's gloomy.
I want my
soul to be free worldwide,
able to run
all over the place.
*
Silence is
like lightning and
people who
know do not make a fuss
while those
who make a fuss are ignorant:
that is
what Lao Tzu said.
I could not
understand such a saying:
I was
always in too much of a rush
I was
noisy.
Today is
not the first Harvest Celebration
I've spent
alone like this
but the
reason I'm gloomier today
is all to
do with an incurable sickness.
Putting a
bowl of makkŏlli
on the
rickety table
of a poor
neighborhood's lowest grog-shop
I celebrate
rites for my father's soul.
When that's
done
I drink
what remains
then
inevitably
set out
again
as I'm
forty now.
You think
my fairly lucid mind and my spotless soul,
buried
together with my flesh in the ground,
will also
rot and ooze and be devoured?
Jaspers
said
that if you
ask science about its own significance,
it is
utterly unable to reply.
In this half-penny
world of utter obstinacy
I wonder
how I have managed to survive at all.
I've no
particular complaint to make
but though
my shitty mind may rot
it's
altogether another matter when it comes
to the soul
that's making me write this poem.
Years after
I die, maybe my soul
will be
boarding late buses in the streets of Seoul,
gladly
paying the penny it's been clutching so hard.
A seed that
will be this flower next year
has plunged
fleetingly into the breeze
seeking its
way with blood-shot eyes.
After
wandering penniless
from wood
to wood, hill to hill,
it has to
endure agonies of thirst in a sandbank.
At last a
little lamb comes home.
Tenderly meeting
the ground without a word
it is
guided to the house of rest.
Mary!
Grant me a
lifetime like this flower.
- One autumn day, 1970
Father and
mother lie
in the
family burial plot at home
I'm all on
my own
here in
Seoul
brother and
sisters
are down in
Pusan
I don't
have the fare
so I can't
go.
If there's
a fare to pay
when you
pass away
does that
mean
I'll never
be able to go?
When you
think of it, ah,
what a deep
thing life is.
1.
Late at
night
as I lie
vacantly
there's a
noise somewhere.
The room is
dark
but on the
roof
starlight
is piled up white.
Is it the
weight that wakes me up?
I want to
walk in the starlight village on the roof
yet I'm
really loath to get out of bed.
If I listen
hard
there's a
noise.
What can
that noise be?
It sounds
as though someone's having a drink
in the
starlight village pub on the roof.
If I strain
to hear
it sounds
like the voice of drunken angels
it sounds
like Dostoevsky's voice
like the
noise of friends killed young
it's no
such thing.
That
rogue's
a thief
peeping into my room.
But there's
nothing here worth stealing.
I'll have
to think again.
Above the
roof the stars are in full glory.
Perhaps
it's some guy from the Milky Way.
I'm not
afraid, anyway.
That guy
if he's
come all this way
isn't going
to waste his time staring at me.
I could
invite him to come inside
but I don't
expect he'd understand. . . .
Still, he
did say something
clearly in
our language
before he
went away.
"Have
breakfast in my neighborhood."
He must
have been a saucy fellow.
2.
Is it
shining or not?
That star
so faintly
shining
is the
farthest star
in the
Milky Way.
It must be
two billion light years away.
I wonder
how it makes such a long journey?
On foot?
by bus?
or in a
taxi perhaps?
Have a safe
journey, anyway.
- Bird
That day, when
I suffered
like a shirt
beneath the iron,
I can't say
how many years ago . . .
That day
when one summer bug tried to shake hands with me
as I
perspired by a back window in a fearful house,
I can't say
how many years ago . . . .
Your flesh
and bones all know
which is
mightier,
sincerity
or pain . . .
To one side
of the
heaven in my mind
a bird is
stretching its wings in alarm.
What makes flowers bloom like this?
Beautiful
beyond compare, tender and so quiet,
they're
quite preposterously superhuman.
Even our
wisest doing their best can't rival them . . .
Try as she
may, the fairest princess is bound to fail.
There are
sometimes things like this to name.
Not even Mr
University, no matter how rugged.
How could anyone
roughly pluck this flower?
Wasn't he
singing a hymn, foolishly at that . . .
*
Out early at Kwanghwa-mun, I witnessed the funeral
procession of the star they called "The Queen of Tears." The funeral banners were streaming, the
band was tootling, while several buses and a great crowd filled the road. I
mused thoughtfully. About how my late father had been a devoted fan of that
same Queen of Tears? No, not that. How sometimes the funerals of writers have
passed the same way. With no banners, certainly no band, and absolutely no
procession, a totally wretched, incomparably seedy-looking gathering. To earn
that seediness was the sole reason they wrote poetry.
*
1.
Dear Mother and Father, and my lovely niece Yong-jun
who left us in childhood, I do hope you're at peace under the heavenly trees.
Meanwhile, three poets have gone your way, I want you to keep an ear open for
news of them. Their names are Cho Chi-hun, Kim Su-yŏng, Choe Kye-rak. If you
meet them, please give them warm wishes on behalf of your despicable son. While
they were alive they were no end kind and helpful to me. I often spent time
with them. Those three are the only ones who'll speak no ill of me. I hope you
keep well.
2.
Brighter
than the
morning sunlight
more
complicated
than the
whole wide world
more
tormented
than the
dark
those men
have gone
on ahead, leaving us here.
Silently a
leaf comes fluttering down
drops on my
chest and is gone.
The spot
where it falls
is just
beside the wound
deeply
scored
that drove
me out into life
with not a
moment then to utter a cry.
There the
leaf
is now
wholeheartedly
watching
you as it examines your life.
The wind
keeps on blowing
on and on
blowing
the leaf
watching motionless over the wound
that leaf
is an eye, an eye,
clear
heaven's eye, our eye, mother's
angry,
tearful eye as she calls you.
Won't somebody give me a house? I roar to the heavens.
Hear me, someone, to the ends of the earth . . . I got married just a few weeks
ago, so how can I help but shout like this? God in his heaven will hear with a
smile. The French poet Arthur Rimbaud put an ad in a London newspaper.
"Won't someone take me to a southern country?" A ship's captain saw
it, gladly took him on board and shipped him to a southern country. So I'm
shouting like a giant. A house is a treasure. The whole world may crumble and
fall, my house will remain . . .
Our house
is thatched, next door's is thatched too.
Our house
belongs to the people of Seoul
I've never
had dealings with the folk next door.
It's a
matter of crossing the street
but the
house next door's located
somewhere
in Africa.
Three
families live in our house, the owner's too,
our
population density's at international levels.
Fourteen
people in all, no less.
Our house
sold off its only dog:
are we a
developing country like the papers say?
Next door
they've put up a TV antenna
they're
really advanced.
I know our
house's owner's name,
he does his
best to be kind;
could the
house next door be Jesus Christ's?
*
The
monsoons are late in coming.
They were
needed for the crops
but that's all junk for ordinary folks. . .
I suddenly
think of remote Cheju Island. . .
I was never
once able to visit it!
Isn't it
somewhere near London?
There's no
way I'll ever get there.
I must make
a long journey, to the coast at least . . .
Then the
scent of that island may come drifting by.
*
Is rain
really always pouring down
into
Ch'ŏnji Lake on Paektu Mountain?
Old Father
Tangun must have used an umbrella.
The falls
at the head of the Yalu River roar down
and form
such a great whirlpool
that even
the tiger has to tremble for fear.
There may
be a classical poem about white clouds,
there's no
classical poem about this mountain.
So I'm
obliged to write one, I suppose?
Limply the leaves are getting wet in the rain.
The trunk's
getting wet too, the fruit as well.
Every
surface is meeting the same fate.
The
stream's getting wet, too,
like a
grandchild shaking hands with grandad.
The local
folk must be glad to see it . . .
It's like a
fiesta in a forest village.
The
womenfolk are preparing the next day's work
and the
husbands are busy drinking their fill.
*
Rain is
extremely pure and innocent.
Even if it
only rains for a day
the
mountain streams, that were dry before, swell.
The late
poet Kim Kwan-Sik
used to say
that humans live at riversides;
by the
looks of it that's the king of truths.
Why do
trees grow so luxuriantly at riversides?
Not because
they've got enough water there
but because
they love the riverside mood.
1
Like a dark
continent, an uninterrupted mass
of clouds is
covering the sky
in a
strange silence. Luckily, it's raining.
It's the
rainy season now
and on that
dark continent lies the Great Wall.
Perhaps
there may be peals of thunder.
Isn't the
universe a land of mystery?
Where do
the moon and stars go in the daytime?
Maybe
rain's the green light for them?
2
This spring
water
obliged to
rise now with the dawn
was perhaps
rain that fell on such and such a day.
The hill
itself and the nearby rocks may know,
the sky and
clouds must know for sure,
but they
have no mouths, it's frustrating.
There's no
harm in drinking this spring-water,
its taste
can never vary.
You only
need pray for good luck.
3
From a
commonsensical view, rain falls on all of Nature.
But you
think it's just falling on the roof,
not
realizing it's striking the vase inside.
Only think!
Nature's
the whole of the cosmos.
Which is
why it's striking the vase as well.
Physically
the vase is not being struck
but in
actual fact the vase's real soul,
being
raised to the roof, is getting rained on.
4
The
chemical composition of water
is two
hydrogen atoms and one oxygen
I already
knew that in middle school.
But I still
don't know
what on
earth there is
behind that
hydrogen and oxygen . . .
What's in
there is a wild beast fit to be feared.
A hydrogen
bomb behind the hydrogen,
an atom
bomb behind the oxygen . . .
5
When I was
in primary school
if ever it
rained
I didn't
use to go to school.
I would desperately
beg my mother
(she's
already gone to the kingdom of heaven)
to bake me
some beans because I was sick.
I'll go out
now
but seeing
I'm already forty
it's no use
setting the world back to front.
*
Ipch'un's come,
it's much less cold!
Winter's
over, spring's nearly here.
I scan the
calendar up and down.
Steaming
breath again?
Earth's
idea of a joke!
Soon
flowers will be blooming.
Faintly
gleaming sun,
why are you
so gloomy?
Won't the
arctic turn into the tropics?
If you want
to go downtown from here by bus,
this being
the suburbs, it takes about an hour.
Our
neighborhood lies at the foot of Mount Surak.
The water's
good and the hills are good.
The people
here are kind-hearted too.
It's a fine
place to make a home.
Today the
rain is drizzling down.
It's a
gloomy day and cold though it's spring.
I like it
here, I like it here.
What can
that sound be?
The sound of the earth?
The sound
of the sky?
A moment's
thought: the sound of a bell
a sound
heard from far far away.
How far
will that sound go?
Maybe to
the ends of space.
Or perhaps
it will sink beneath the ground
and even be
heard in the kingdom of heaven?
As the
stream poured fiercely down
it even
broke into waves.
Striking
rocks, its billows raged in fury.
It poured
yesterday all day and all night until
the water
falling in the hills, wandering beneath the pines,
united in
the valley in this shape.
Hills and
land being physically higher than the sea,
water is
naturally bound to flow downwards
but today's
the first time I ever saw waves raging so.
What's
normal is "a believing heart"
so why am I
contrary with "a heart believed"?
The
uncommon reason is as follows . . .
I have no
believing heart
I believe
my heart.
Firmly
firmly I believe my heart.
I have
nothing but a heart believed,
no riches
no property
at all.
A proverb
is far more than any truth.
Truth
depends on reasoning
and life's only a smattering of truth.
Experience
of life rebels against that.
Life's
history's composed of rise and fall.
All
positions are the accesories of time.
My friend
was well-versed
in almost
everything, only he looked a fool,
and life
deals generously even with fools.
-Grass
This grass
is one foot high at least.
With its
delicate dangling leaves it looks