by Pak Chaesam
goes on repeating after a thousand years.
So do not grow weary.
You, the one who
turns even to strange things
in your yearning; you.
11
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r 12
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r From the Song of a Celebrated Singer
Wind that moves among the pine branches;
with such a gentle stirring, my love,
I wish I could go to you.
But this is a dream
that eighty years of practice will not bring.
So it is. With this flesh-stained,
blood-stained voice, my one, sole possession, torn from the field that I
cultivate, ripped root, branch and trunk
from my innermost body
shaken to its core, I sing you
this song.
13
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r 14
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r A Path of a Heavenly Maiden
Seeing the many peaks of So˘rak Mountain,
the heavenly maiden’s descending path
appears. Not a single trail,
nor a path of two or three branches,
but a shy path along the inner
thighs, deepened with numerous valleys,
the borderline where clouds
and sunlight met and departed,
where the sound of thin robes rustling,
and even the scent of divine flesh
may be captured.
15
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r 16
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r Autumn River in Burning Tears
When my mind cannot find a way to rest in any place, if I follow the trail of a friend’s sad story of love, taking autumn sunlight along as a kind of companion, before I know it I am at the ridge, and the tears come.
The lamps and other lights that gather
at elder brother’s house for the ceremonies may be lights, but I have seen the autumn river burning in tears as the sun sets.
Look at that, just look!
No, more than you, more than me . . .
When the fresh and happy words of first love like the sound of a mountain stream fade,
and even the tears that next rise
at the end of love have melted away,
I saw for the first time
the autumn river whose voice had died
as it came in its madness to the sea.
17
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r 18
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r Some Day, Some Month
Thinking about
the pain of the yellow earth hill
shedding its skin in the dust
of long, hot days of sunshine,
are you also considering
the wind that went flying
past past past, raising
the dust?
My wife, just now
as you lie like that hill in the sun,
your breasts uncovered,
it seems good to be watching
the meandering clouds
while the medicine pot boils away
in the other corner of the yard.
19
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r 20
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r As Summer Goes and Autumn Comes
As summer goes
and autumn comes,
the sun goes down,
the moon rises,
as sweat is scattered
and the five grains harvested,
torments of the sun endured
for the jewel moonlight to be gathered up, O my love,
have you offered up your precious tears
in seeking a song that cannot be changed?
21
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r 22
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r Landscape Painter
Once there was a landscape artist
who could paint nothing but mountains and water, so he offered up, bead by bead, the voices of the birds and gave them to the gods;
the sunlight, and the wind as well,
he offered up
and was left with no more than a brush
full of shimmering air
facing the deafened mountains and waters.
23
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r 24
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r Enough to Say It’s Far
About the distance
to the sun and moon, to the stars,
whatever else, it is
enough to say it’s far.
And the distance between
my love and me,
since it cannot be measured with a rule,
for this too
it is enough to say it’s far.
I cannot see beyond
these things, afloat,
glimmering,
in the bowl of cool water.
And because of my thirst
now I have no other thought
than to drink of this cool water.
25
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r 26
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r In the Wind
Parting your hair
gently, an elegant
flirtation, the wind
that passed
now
confronts me like a foe,
wraps around my
middle, chilly,
distant.
With your dream,
girl, you were once
a quick breeze,
embroidering your hair,
dreamily,
with rainbow hues;
but now here
where most sharply
I feel the pain,
you do not caress me but
whet the blade and
stab, and stab.
27
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r 28
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r Waking Alone at Dawn
Awakening alone at dawn
I look at the rice paper door
soaked in waterlike air.
Getting up,
laziness pulls at my waist,
or closing my eyes again,
a freshness that sweeps clean
the area above my brow:
by now they have started off
for Kosam, to Changja Pond,
and while they fish for happiness,
I am left with the rice paper door!
Is an old love to be found
in the water? Even such
an idle thought as this
might fill my empty waiting.
29
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r 30
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r Spring’s Pathway
Along the river where the ice has melted
in company with my sister just recovered . . .
Does serving both together
make the faint next world any clearer?
In the village away across the river,
have the peach blossoms started to bloom?
Just now the bees are birring
and the air is filled with a shimmering,
the pearly mists are rising,
a sign of the snows melting on the mountaintops, and still I cannot point it out:
the plain, the visible pathway that spring is coming down.
31
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r 32
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r News from Home
Yes, yes: the medicine shop, Taesil,
down by the stream;
that smell, pungent, of all those dried herbs: I know it, I know it well.
But you’re saying the old man—
he had that fine, full beard
and such a sturdy build;
you say he’s gone, left this life?
And i
t’s already been several years?
And down by the corner
at P’alp’o town,
Ch’anggwo˘n’s auntie from Saryang island,
the one who sold wine as she got older,
the one who always used
camellia oil in her hair?
You mean her too? Gone like the wind?
What’s to be made of such news?
It all winds up flowing by, passing on . . .
But if the bamboo groves up on the hill
are swaying bright and cool as before
here and there in the sunlight and wind,
and the pond waters down below are still,
the islands drowsily floating,
I can still be thankful, after all,
as if these were still my affair.
33
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r 34
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r Immortals’ Paduk Game
For a single move a thousand
years have gone flowing past
while for the next move a thousand
years have passed and still
no sound of a stone
striking the board.
35
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r 36
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r Untitled
In sunlight suffused
with the glow of apples
on thin distant branches
in orchards near Taegu,
morning shakes, as the train,
like an illness,
reaches the height of its fever.
Love, my love
so very far:
in moments like this
even silk round my waist is painful.
37
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r 38
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r Night at Tonghak Temple
Bury in order the snowmelt
and the spring night,
and somewhere in the next world
water drops fall from the eaves
while at the very edge of your faraway
lips, now the whole universe collapses.
39
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r 40
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r Seeing the Ferry
Someone can make a small boat
and set it asail
on the vast-seeming waters
of the broad pond,
but in the end
what remains is a painful fragment,
the brief erasure
of the waves’ eternal
brilliant, glittering design.
O my love,
this desire to draw
close to you has left
only that wound
in your boundless
and patient heart.
41
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r 42
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r My First Love
My first love, she
could not lift her face
after the kiss.
And I was looking
somewhere else as well.
Silken strands of her hair
scented soft as the newly
picked seaweed in the air;
that scent so soon
causing the heart to ache
has attached itself
to my hand.
Oh the shame, the writhing!
Look at the slender stream
sent down out of the valley,
how in their watery scales
the currents make their weeping,
and moonlight, after the currents,
piled on top was weeping too.
43
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r 44
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r In an Empty Courtyard
In a courtyard that all have left,
magnolias are in bloom.
Half the branches
in this world, the remainder in the next,
flower quietly wherever
places are away from human habitation.
45
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r 46
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r Nothing
Sometimes the wind
blows over the plantain leaf
where the drops of water
take their bright form, and fall.
Beyond this moment of perfect calm
life wants nothing.
47
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r 48
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r Seeing the Fresh Green
What things have I done wrong?
Having grown up by the sea,
caught crabs and without much thought,
snapped off their legs,
turned fish I hooked
into sashimi and ate it raw,
swam heedlessly through the flowering patterns of sunlight gleaming on the waves:
such things as these all at once
well up, bottomless, endless, confronting me.
And to soothe these, the gentle tremor that rises deep within; the light and gentle vertigo, something I cannot overcome.
What is there that I can ever overcome?
49
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r 50
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r The Feeling of the Gingko
That last time on my way home
I had gone to ease the fever.
I went into the yard behind
the credit union office
and I learned a new form
of tears, looking at the gingko leaves.
As a primary school student,
lonely and unhappy, I had dreamed
of gathering up money after a day
when I had gathered gingko leaves.
Which was it, money
or my studies that I thought of
when I placed one gingko leaf
between the pages of our ethics book?
With all the other children
I became a gingko leaf myself,
there in front of the teacher,
steadily raising our hands
as she counted Yes, yes, yes, yes . . .
Scattering tears of yellow gold,
I stood there on the autumn ground.
51
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r 52
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r Recollection 13
After a dip in the sea
without towels
we would dry off,
our peppers showing plainly.
Even on hot days
they sometimes were cold
and we seemed to freeze, pale.
When big sister’s friends
or some auntie saw us,
why, quite without shame
we just sat there letting time
go by, our peppers showing,
like a row of sunflowers.
But we couldn’t understand the girls,
why, without little peppers
to hide they still covered themselves,
shy and afraid.
We might have been a bit
too proud of our peppers
as they jingle-jangled
like handbells.
53
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r 54
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r Spring Path
Spring boughs, or to be more precise,
the force of the moisture rising
through the weeping willow now turns
into dazzling air and speaks. It says,
“You, there! Pull yourself together, you!”
I am an insect that has molted.
Though I crawl on the ground I shall be
leaping, later, and flying.
But for now, for such painfully tender
hands and feet, back, even these eyes,
it is all too much, too burdensome, this
“You! Pull yourself together.”
The ninety days of spring is a span too short for enduring such discomfort,
so the day’s light lingers on
in the crawling and the resting,
the lying down like flowing mist.
55
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r 56
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r The Road Back
Starting on the frosty path at dawn,
Mother now soaked from the heavy night’s dew; Mother has come back after a day of selling to the place where we lie asleep.
There is no jar of honey on the shelf,
only the gray dust piling,
while we children, too small and dirty to work off the debts, lie stretched out here, there.
No one to see, no one
to comprehend when she unties
the starlight she carries back on her forehead, and shakes loose the moonlight
that clings to her sleeves.
57
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r 58
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r New Arirang
Granted there are mountains, granted, the sea; but, my love, I can never leave you.
No matter what I try,
eyes distant as your mountains
that look out a hundred li or more; whatever I do,
the forehead clear as water
that reflects my transgressions like a mirror; whatever shall I do,
your lips, the warmly welcoming entrance
to the village, all blooming with peach blossoms and cherry; and the thickly grown forest,
your cool and fragrant hair,
what shall I do?
The breasts of the hills back home,
Oh no matter what I do,
whatever I try,
because the sea and the mountain
are, my love, there is no way ever to forget you.
Arirang: the most well-known Korean folksong, having a wide range of melodies and verses.
59
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r 60
E n o u g h t o S a y I t ’ s F a r Looking at Winter Trees