English

Fy Satyre fie, shall each mechanick slaue,
Each dunghill pesant, free perusall haue
Of thy well labor'd lines? Each sattin sute,
Each quaint fashion-monger, whose sole repute
Rests in his trim gay clothes, lye slauering
Taynting thy lines with his lewd censuring?
Shall each odd puisne of the Lawyers Inne,
Each barmy-froth, that last day did beginne
To reade his little, or his nere a whit ,
Or shall some greater auncient, of lesse wit,
(That neuer turnd but browne Tobacco leaues

MIRROR 3

Once I was sitting on the right hand side of god in Paradise,
in repartee as witty as a drone's wing is long!
that's utterly ridiculous

unaware that the light plays tricks on the retina
I follow the white light until
I pitch headlong into this sewage ditch; a mirror of clay,

with my head buried and my beak stuck in the field of this heart of clay
even when I get to the point where I'm not afraid of filthier things
the mind-body will only change

MIRROR 2

The day the Soviet Union collapsed I, I
was spreading out the sports page in the Kwangju Airport.
Has my chance to betray this life in totality
just up and disappeared? At first, there was absolutely
no way to accept the fact that I had turned 40.
It's because this is one " fucked-up century. "
Of course, if you tell me to go live in Pyongyang, I can't do it.
So why is my pain any worse than theirs?
I wanted to travel up across the Kaema Plateau. I can't just head straight off for Okinawa.

MIRROR 1

While I dread looking into the mirror
I show up there frequently.
Looking

for an ashtray, I go to the bookshelf and back
ah, I'm going back and forth to the bookshelf, I think.
When my body grazes against the corner of the bookshelf
ah, I'm still over here, I think
a certain mass filled mostly with water, I think:
now and then I've thought about the dead, but
it's either this guy Ch'ae Kwangsok, who ended every sentence with " Fuck, "
drunk in front of the shredded chickens at the Kubanp'o Chicken House

SCENE 9 (Extracts)

Who says that they have seen the sky?
Who says that they have ever seen the sky
clear without one single cloud?

What you have seen is dark clouds
that you have taken for the sky
— you have kept on living.

Sweep away, human kind,
the clouds within your hearts.

By morning and night,
sweep away the clouds within your hearts,
and you will see
Eternity's sky spotless and clear,

and you will bring knowledge
of awe.

Take the utmost care,

SCENE 8

Ha-nui
limped
a little with one foot.

When he was three
he was thrown down
in Kim the Clerk's yard.

The sound of the gate opening and shutting,
the rough rasping sound of a rolling gourd,
dry grass flying here and there,

when the cockerel
in the big house crows far away,
on and on, no regard for the time,

at such moments, without doubt,
starving hordes in search of tree roots,
the bark of pines, early sprouting shepherd's-purse,
mugwort roots,

My shoelaces come untied.
In harvest October when our ears ring sharply.
in the spaces between the daily round of chores
my shoelaces come untied.
The current of life
is not these motley writings, but
rushes like an overflowing spring.
Beneath the heavens
some things become
clouds,
other things become
stones.
In this eternity of pure color in harvest October
however much I live completion never comes.
My shoelaces come untied.
Some
from the stones
become monuments.
Some

10. TODAY

The wind is blowing;
scudding rags of cloud
hide the sky;
our child has gone to the army.
Today
this
trembling — what is it?
We come and go
and miss in passing, at the edge of simmering water.
While from the depths
a vortex rises,
those who must leave, depart
and even in the spaces in the streaming mass of soldiers
no one is left out.

*****

After all, the earth, too,
is but a hunk of stone,
speck in absolute space.
mote enveloped in a cloud

When night falls here, I think of that other night
when the shadow fell once and for all and I
was cast out of the light into this endless gloom.
Twilight here calls forth from certain birds
a kind of mournful twitter, but silent tears from me
as I think of how it was that night in the city.
The nimble hours skittered, turning us all clumsy
and the simplest menial task onerous. Packing
was either a nightmare itself or one of those cruel jokes
you sometimes find in your worst dreams. Papers

Book II

Now Ardea was besieg'd, the Town was strong,
The men resolv'd, and so the Leaguer long:
And whilst the Enemy did the War delay,
Dissolv'd in Ease the careless Souldiers lay,
And spent the vacant time in sport and play.
Young Tarquin doth adorn his Noble Feasts,
The Captains treats, and thus bespeaks his Guests;
Whilst we lye lingring in a tedious War,
And far from Conquest tired out with Care,
How do our Women lead their Lives at Rome ?
And are we thought on by our Wives at home?