Because with alarming accuracy
she’ d been identifying patterns
I was unaware of — this tic, that
tendency, like the way I’ ve mastered
the language of intimacy
in order to conceal how I felt —
I knew I was in danger
of being terribly understood.
To say how much I've missed you, I offer this,
at most mist, at least assorted letters, lists,
numbers I insist tell stories. I kissed you
last, Dad, in the casket in which you passed on,
to some next place, but last listened for your voice
last night, these long years after, will listen next
when next oppressed by blue-gray, as I am now,
as I, thus lost, am always by your absence.
The world has certified itself rid of
all but the argument: to eradicate or not
the small stock of variola frozen,
quarantined — a dormancy it has
refused, just once, for a woman behind a sterile
lens, her glass slide a clearest, most
becoming pane. How could it resist slipping
away with her, that discrete first pock?
Dormant are pinnacles and streams of the mountains,
Chasms and bluffs and crawlers fed by the dark earth;
Dormant are wild animals and that tribe of bees
And monsters out of the sea’ s dark syntax;
Dormant are clans of birds with wings that envelop.
I. e., the kind of verse
That doesn’ t try to force
People to their knees
(Seeing as it sees
To people’ s being thrown
By forces of their own).
I was passionate,
filled with longing,
I searched
far and wide.
But the day
that the Truthful One
found me,
I was at home.
The great sea
frees me, moves me,
as a strong river carries a weed.
Earth and her strong winds
move me, take me away,
and my soul is swept up in joy.
O my Lord,
if I worship you
from fear of hell, burn me in hell.
If I worship you
from hope of Paradise, bar me from its gates.
But if I worship you
for yourself alone, grant me then the beauty of your Face.
Of all that God has shown me
I can speak just the smallest word,
Nor more than a honey bee
Takes on his foot
From an overspilling jar.
Someone’ s coming
from the other world.
Hiss of night rain.
Someone’ s going there now.
The two are sure to meet.
Translated from the Korean
