Sahara By Ko Un
Translated by Rodney E. Tyson & Hong Eun-Taek
The Quarterly Review: Poetry & Criticism, 5(1), pp. 242-243. Spring 2002.
For a hundred years the prevailing westerlies have continued to blow
A flag being lowered
The hem of a mother's colorless skirt
And the laundry hung out to dry
Were fluttering all day long toward the east where the sun was buried in the running clouds
Dead leaves rolled over
And more than half of me was someone else
Once
My ancestors were always lonely
Every night, by the bitter moonlight between the ribs of their frail breasts
They wept and wept
The next day, like the waste of leftover tears
The late Siberian chrysanthemums were gone
Someone
Effortlessly lifted a slave's life like a block of rock
Should howl once and should leave without mercyThere, in the sandstorm that I saw in a dream
Is the old Bedoin man’s night anxiously waiting for me
I should go there
To that boundless desert, the Sahara
A hundred years later
I should come back from thereOh, the mummy that is returning with heavy footsteps, is it me? You?
The Quarterly Review: Poetry & Criticism | Curriculum Vitae