Around Unmun Temple at Ch'Eongdo
All day long I've been hidden, enmeshed, locked in
the shadow of the holy mountain,
my body covered with shame.
I'd hoped there would be a dog
barking furiously.
Unable to go forward,
unable to go back,
at least with the sound of a dog barking
I'd attain something . . . something.
Instead of a dog barking there was silence,
then the sound of a drum beaten loud & fast
by a young nun.
Into this temple come none of the grand sounds,
none of the great thoughts.
In the cabbage field, heads all the same size
are profiles of young novice nuns & the priestesses
sitting in Unmun Temple.
Young faces
like dew,
like hoarfrost.
Fun and Games with a Sphere
Last night I cut off an arm
and gave it to a poor woman.
Then I cut off the other arm ––
gave that to her too.
So now I have no arms. Ha ha ha.
Early this morning I cut off both legs
and gave them to a nearby idler.
Now I’m legless. Ha ha ha.
I wonder though:
What the hell am I doing? Ha ha ha.
This morning I gave up my torso
to a lion in the zoo.
So now I have
no shoulder-blades. No navel, either.
No lungs.What's more, no spleen or liver. Ha ha ha.
It can’t be helped. Now I'm nothing
but a head, nothing but a head,
nothing but a head. Ha ha ha.
A bald monk from Chogye Temple
kicks my head away.
Of l go, spinning merrily.
Another bald monk pokes at me with his head
I soar up high
then down I fall, plunk.
World games! Global games! Ha ha ha.
Just look at this!
With one single butt I’ll send the earth,
this helpless earth astray
off course, off its tracks. I'll send this world off
to vanish forever into some outer space void.
Keumgang-Gul / Diamond Cave
What a relief
you cannot live everywhere all at once.
Today, here in Diamond Cave,
there's no longer any reason to live.
Stay one or two days:
this world
& the Other are drained of difference.
Wind blows.
As a pearl is born at seabottom in agony
out of oyster flesh from within the most obscure darkness
here the wind blows from the depths.
I want to travel far & then return.
The wind blows as if I were eighty-five,
maybe eighty-seven.
Loss
There’s a trail uphill that leads somewhere.
After reading just a few lines written in an old dead tongue
I have to head for that hill
wearing canvas shoes made from a gray satchel.
Somewhere a lost object is in a hurry to be found.
There’s a trail uphill that leads somewhere.
The text on the next page of a book is waiting
and someone is listening there, having brought a dead tongue to life.
With the crunch of dead leaves underfoot
the sunlight lingering on my worn clothes,
I sense that my heart is growing several times wider.
That object must be somewhere inside.
An unfamiliar grasshopper jumps, startled by a sneeze
provoked by the spicy odor of dry grass or fodder.
The first day is colder than the thirty-first,
yet the lost object is still nowhere around.
There’s a trail uphill that leads somewhere.
At home, some elder's first death anniversary awaits.
Behind me someone is pestering my heart,
saying: there, there, or there,
but to me it's full of reconciliation; there’s nothing there.
Ultimately, I suppose, that lost object will likewise be named in a dead tongue.
Taklamakan Desert
Translated By Suji Kwock Kim & Sunja Kim Kwock
Why I’m going to the Taklamakan Desert:
the emptiness there.
Why I’m going to the Taklamakan Desert
at seventy-five, leaving all words behind: the cry
of the emptiness there.
Why I’m going to the Taklamakan Desert:
I can no longer stand
the world’s greed
or mine.
There, in the Taklamakan Desert,
the silence of a thousand-year-old skull.
