Hyecho's Time*
--From Turpan to DunhwangBy Lee Seung Ha
Translated by Rodney E. Tyson & Hong Eun-Taek
The Quarterly Review: Poetry & Criticism, 3(4), pp. 170-171. Winter 2000.
Once again, as the yellow dust wind blows, I rub my eyes
From when has this cruel wind blown?
Time going over mountain ranges and crossing deserts
The years would have been broken into pieces like rocks into pebbles
And time would have been piled up like pebbles becoming sandSealed inside a Magao Grotto in Dunhwang is
Hyecho's time, the long, long 1200 years
During that time, while innumerable people were born and died
They would have cried and cried. Dreaming of the Buddhist Paradise
Where there are no tears, did they draw the pictures on the walls of Dunhwang?Time is not something that comes like the wind and goes away like water
It is something I draw up with sweat rolling
On the road to Dunhwang, my legs aching, I look up to the night sky
One flickering beam of starlight in that pitch-dark sky
Nods its head and lights a fire in my heart
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*Hyecho (704-787 A.D.) was a prominent Buddhist monk during Korea's Shilla Dynasty. His book of travel in India, Wang-o-cheon-chuk-kuk-jeon, was discovered in 1908 inside a grotto in Magao Cave in Dunhwang, China after being sealed away for about 1200 years. Since the first century B.C., the city of Dunhwang was an important way station on the Silk Road, the main trade route between China and Central Asia.
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