Yesterday it was still January and I drove home
and the roads were wet and the fields were wet
and a palette knife

had spread a slab of dark blue forestry across the hill.
A splashed white van appeared from a side road
then turned off and I drove on into the drab morning

which was mudded and plain and there was a kind of weary happiness
that nothing was trying to be anything much and nothing
was being suggested. I don’t know how else to explain

the calm of this grey wetness with hardly a glimmer of light or life,
only my car tyres swishing the lying water,
and the crows balanced and rocking on the windy lines.

My branch of thoughts is frail tonight
As one lone-wind-whipped weed.
Little I care if a rain drop laughs
Or cries; I cannot heed

Such trifles now as a twinkling star, 
Or catch a night-bird’s tune. 
My whole life is you, to-night,
And you, a cool distant moon.

With a few soft words to nurture my heart
And brighter beams following love’s cool shower
Who knows but this frail wind-whipped weed
Might bear you a gorgeous flower!

Then Almitra spoke, saying, We would ask now of Death.
    And he said:
    You would know the secret of death.
    But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life?
    The owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day cannot unveil the mystery of light.
    If you would indeed behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide unto the body of life.
    For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.

    In the depth of your hopes and desires lies your silent knowledge of the beyond;
    And like seeds dreaming beneath the snow your heart dreams of spring.
    Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.
    Your fear of death is but the trembling of the shepherd when he stands before the king whose hand is to be laid upon him in honour.
    Is the shepherd not joyful beneath his trembling, that he shall wear the mark of the king?
    Yet is he not more mindful of his trembling?

    For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?
    And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?

    Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.
    And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb.
    And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

^{translated from the Korean by Younghill Kang}

Bereavement is the source of beauty.
The beauty of bereavement cannot be found
           either in the priceless gold of the morning,
                 or in the threadless black velvet of night.

Nor can it be found in immortal life, nor in an unfading blue sky.
Beloved, without bereavement, after the tears in agony of death,
How could I find life and laughter again?
Oh, oh, beauty is the child of bereavement.

이별은 미(美)의 창조

이별은 미(美)의 창조입니다. 
이별의 미는 아침의 바탕[質] 없는 황금과 밤의 올[絲] 없는 검은 비단과 죽음 없는 영원의 생명과 시들지 않는 하늘의 푸른 꽃에도 없습니다. 
임이여, 이별이 아니면 나는 눈물에서 죽었다가 웃음에서 다시 살아날 수가 없습니다. 오오, 이별이여. 
미는 이별의 창조입니다.

^{translated from the Korean by Younghill Kang}

Others would think of their loves.

My love I would forget.

One thinks and considers, to forget.

One thinks and looks, when it is scarcely forgotten.

When wanting to forget, it was thinking,

When thinking, it could not be forgotten.

If I should not think, nor not forget - let be, let be.

Not thinking, not forgetting - let be, let be.

But that too is impossible.

I think, I think of the beloved only, incessantly. What shall I do?

If my purpose were but to forget!

Forgetting is not an unheard of thing.

Only it would be death and sleeping.

Impossible, while there is the beloved.

Ah! ah! the forgetting - that is the more desolate!

나는 잊고저

남들은 님을 생각한다지만 
나는 님을 잊고자 하여요 
잊고자 할수록 생각히기로 
행여 잊힐가 하고 생각하여 보았습니다

잊으려면 생각히고 
생각하면 잊히지 아니하니 
잊지도 말고 생각도 말아 볼까요 
잊든지 생각든지 내버려두어 볼까요 
그러나 그리도 아니 되고 
끊임없는 생각 생각에 임뿐인데 어찌하여요

구태여 잊으려면 
잊을 수가 없는 것은 아니지만 
잠과 죽음뿐이기로 
임 두고는 못하여요

아아 잊히지 않는 생각보다 
잊고자 하는 그것이 더욱 괴롭습니다

^{Prince tour, Public Hall, November 21, 1982}

By the time I got here, the album
            was already history. 1999 dropped in 1982, 
when I worried about what I’d do with my life

after high school, and as I fretted over 
            how my hair looked on mornings 
before I left for school; though, sadly,

my worries were not in that order. 
            But when I faced the end of the century, 
I realized I knew little more then than I did when I sang

along with Prince at the Coliseum in Cleveland.
            On that night, I didn’t know a concert could be history. 
Me, just living in a moment of not recalling any moment

before this one, which must be what joy
            was, but what did I know? No one understood 
what a new century would look like,

and I didn’t gather that I’d lose loved
            ones, soon after the pages of the calendar tore away.
Back then, I didn’t understand what I’d be

if Prince had not been. Now, years later, 
            “life is just a party, and parties weren’t meant to last.”
His lyrics weigh on me, as I grow older and ill,

and years later I’ll barely remember this moment 
            of simply remembering, just another day called today.
But this time, even now, I know more:

I know, for instance, even as I hum a tune 
            and bring forth memories of that night, 
I’ve already become a point in history

before I even finish this song.

Given that you are the object 
of the emperor’s touch; given that you object

to his learnt repetition of love; given the abject 
shame of a body entered by another body’s object

permanence; given shame’s objective; 
given your maiden name and the object

of the game: may everybody know, but nobody object— 
the emperor is your maker. And you—his subject

of rule—have tried to say it true, only to be subjected 
to a cruel inheritance in which memory is the subject

of a sentence the mind cannot objectify 
long enough to hold, but holds true enough to subject

all touch to this kingdom of touching, this abject 
poverty of care dressed as care itself—you slept, objectively,

in your emperor’s bed. The rest is subjective, 
but it was no rest.

Each morning before dawn, a woodpecker and a scold of jays fight over the feeder, screaming and screeching like demons. Over the course of the day, other birds call out: the spotted towhee, the robin and finch, and the siskin with its pitiful, one-note squeal. At dusk, the mourning dove’s breathy melody echoes through the canyon. It’s enough to break your heart, this tune I can imagine being played on a flute carved from bone.

(War Time)

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

Or a Vision in a Dream. A Fragment

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
    Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And ’mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

    The shadow of the dome of pleasure
    Floated midway on the waves;
    Where was heard the mingled measure
    From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
    A damsel with a dulcimer
    In a vision once I saw;
    It was an Abyssinian maid,
    And on her dulcimer she played,
    Singing of Mount Abora.
    Could I revive within me
    Her symphony and song,
    To such a deep delight ’twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

This is my letter to the World 
That never wrote to Me— 
The simple News that Nature told— 
With tender Majesty 

Her Message is committed 
To Hands I cannot see— 
For love of Her—Sweet—countrymen— 
Judge tenderly—of Me 

^{translated from the Ojibwe by the author}

At the threshold
of melancholy
is a voice barely heard

a light wrapped in fog
and a piece of steel
longing for flint.

Strike it.
 

Zisikinebidoon

Gashkikanokaaning
apii gashkenindaman
agaawaa bapoweyan

waateg gashkaabateg
manidoo-biiwaabik
misawenimaad biiwaanan.

Zisikinebidoon.