In Praise of the Graveyard, and: Sun, and: In Epistolary Style
Rent from DeepDyve- In Praise of the Graveyard, and: Sun, and: In Epistolary Style
in praise of the graveyard
Even in the graveyard the leaves of grass are golden, the small domed mounds are not lonely.
In the darkness below ground, the skulls shine white, the odor of death may be sweet.
Those who were sorrowful in life may not regret lying dead, wanting the bright sun to shine on their graves, as it surely will.
Wild flowers are in bloom in the golden grass, mountain birds sing in their wild tongues.
And the dead lie in their graves, warmed by the spring sun. [End Page 148]
sun
O Sun, rise up. O Sun, rise up. O lovely Sun, your face bathed clean, rise up. Over the mountains, over the mountains, consume the darkness, consume the darkness over the mountains through out the long night, then rise up, O lovely Sun, with your blazing face of innocence.
Odious moonlight, odious moonlight, odious moonlight in the weeping valleys, how I hate moonlight in empty gardens!
O Sun, O lovely Sun, when you rise, when you truly rise, I embrace the blue mountains, embrace the blue mountains fluttering their plumes. Happy in solitude, when mountains are blue.
Following deer, following deer, into the sun, into the sun, I frolic with deer when I meet the deer.
Following tigers, following tigers, I frolic with tigers when I meet the tigers.
O Sun, O lovely Sun, O Sun, rise up. Joined with you truly, and not in a dream, flowers and birds and beasts sit together, all having been summoned, all of us on a joyous day of innocence. [End Page 149]
in epistolary style
Sing to me. Sing me a song that will never be sung again. Sing me a song you would want to sing just once. Sing to me in a voice more exalted than the most exalted stars at night; with more heat than the sun, than the burning globe of the sun; more enchanted than the sea’s waves that crest, subside, fold into themselves, ebb, and flow. Sing to me in a voice more weightless than a petal, a breeze, a ray of light; more transparent than a dewdrop, a teardrop, a crystal bead. Sing to me more passionately, more ecstatically than a merging of your soul with mine, of your flesh with my flesh. Sing to me with an erotic splendor. Sing to me a whole cosmos, all beginnings and endings, and summits of summits. Sing to me the abyss of abysses, the depth of depths. [End Page 150]
Kim Jong-gil is one of Korea’s leading twentieth-century poets and a prolific translator of many of the most important contemporary British and American poets into Korean, as well as of many Korean poets into English. His recent books of translation include Among the Flowering Reeds: Classic Korean Poems Written in Chinese. Kim is an emeritus professor of English at Korea University, in Seoul, and a member of the Korean Academy of Arts.
