Plum Blossoms, White Rays

By Jeon Dong Gyun

Translated by Rodney E. Tyson & Hong Eun-Taek

The Quarterly Review: Poetry & Criticism, 3(2), pp. 243-244. Summer 2000.

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On a plum tree in the backyard
A few days after a young heaven came down and
With a newborn baby's actions played and went back

Before the round leaves pointed at the end, first
The flowers blossom,
The white rays
Flying on the world's roads
Where flesh and spirit miss each other

In the midst of the ardent fragrance
Of the white rays
Which embrace a painful life's secrets and exile themselves
Exile themselves, come back in the end
And stay in their place

The icy wind of days lived in sin
The bright snaggle-toothed smile of a girl
Just now learning about love,
The serene echoes
Of books read in the middle of the night
Ripple and come flowing by like the current of a stream
Come flowing by

That they bear a few young
Hang the green fruit
On empty branches in open air
I read
gropingly like Braille letters

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