A Clanking Love Song By Hwang Tong Gyu
Translated by Rodney E. Tyson & Hong Eun-Taek
The Quarterly Review: Poetry & Criticism, 4(3), p. 211. Fall 2001.
I want to snap off like a crab's claw
The mind that clamps on and never lets go
And live with no mind.
Quietly, even more quietly than the cloud passing by righ now
Not with an emptiness of mind
But with no mind I want to live.
At sundown, when the rivers flowing in my mind are entangled,
Lose the way they came and the way they will go, and wander about
Certain waters, feeling a heaviness in the chest, crawl up the river sides
But inevitably run back down.
That place where the waters run down
I want to turn it into a place where mind fades away.
Have you ever seen time marked by "that's all" run-down lines?
The Quarterly Review: Poetry & Criticism | Curriculum Vitae