Spring Blossoms By Ryu Oy Hyang
Translated by Rodney E. Tyson & Hong Eun-Taek
The Quarterly Review: Poetry & Criticism, 4(4), p. 251. Winter 2001.
Old people come out bound by spring sunbeams
And fill up Jongmyo Park
Under the noontide sunbeams pulling the air tight
Exhausted by saeng-no-byeong-sa*, they feel drowsy
But is there anything else they bring out to dry?
Like flowerpots set outside a house
Like the photosynthesis process of leaves
When they unlock the gates of their flesh
From their half-closed eyelids and half-opened mouths
Withered hours flow outThey once each received a baby's body and came into this world
Out of the empty mouths, mouths echoing like hollow caves
Whimpers escaped like a miracle
Yes, spring must have been born there!
There are spring blossoms with buds opening boisterously there!
My view clouded with dust, I mutter, bound with endlessly drifting sunbeams
Spring when the yellow dust wind arrives early
Is getting shorter as the years go by
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*The four inevitable types of agony encountered by all human beings: birth, aging, illness, and death.
The Quarterly Review: Poetry & Criticism | Curriculum Vitae