On my birthday
A crow guffaws, dirty man throwing the punch of his
one joke. And now, nearer, a murder
answers, chortling from the pale hill’ s brow.
From under my lashes’ wings they stretch
clawed feet. There the unflappable years
perch and stare. When I squint, when I
grin, my new old face nearly hops
off my old new face. Considering what’ s flown,
what might yet fly, I lean my chin
on the palm where my half-cashed fortune lies.
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.
Why I’ m going to the Taklamakan Desert:
the emptiness there.
Why I’ m going to the Taklamakan Desert
at seventy-five, leaving all words behind: the cry
of the emptiness there.
Why I’ m going to the Taklamakan Desert:
I can no longer stand
the world’ s greed
or mine.
There, in the Taklamakan Desert,
the silence of a thousand-year-old skull.
Translated from the Korean
You have a strange pet —
one eye is a cat’ s, the other a sheep’ s.
Yet, it won’ t socialize with felines,
will attack any flock.
On moonlit nights,
it wanders on the roof.
When you’ re alone
it will lie in your lap
preoccupied, slowly studying you
until — on its face — a challenge.
Translated from the Chinese
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
It lists beneath a sycamore
swashing in high summer leaf,
and takes a hit from underneath:
a root knuckle bulges along the floor.
Its eight loopholes have fissures, sprouting
thistles; through each the wheat is fattening.
“What’ s this thing for?” A starling sings
its wind-up song. The sun slides out.
And this taste of piss, that Fetherlite
slumped in the corner, those Holsten cans,
the markered slogan
do not try to answer. Might.
Twenty-four thousand times in any year, lightning strikes
and kills. On the Heath, the timber shells, like bony Flemish spires,
point heavenwards in warning. The stags take note and bow their heads
at the sky’ s first challenge, or hurl a bellowing peal back in defiance.
