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FOR NIRVANA 

108 ZEN SIJO POEMS 

CHO OH-HYUN

introductory by KWON YOUNGMIN

translated by HEINZ INSU FENKL

Associate professor of English and Asian studies at SUNY New Paltz.

1

BITTER FLOWER

in my younger days, my name

was wild apricot tree in a fertile field

bees and but butterflies, the jealous spring......

I did not know about flowers then;

but on the day that Suni

went over the wall,

I new that blood was red

2

DAYDREAM

White bellflower in the mountain

   dandelion in the meadow;

the faint memory of my birthplace

   -a pensive face in the well.

Just once, I want to see her again-Suni,

   who stood with her back to the outfield wall.

I do not know  if the light scent of wormwood

   has yet begun to rise

over that hill, where 10 li is such a long way;

   under the moon, too bright,

a small village secretively appears

   as I tread upon this indelible image.

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This night-drink it and it does not fill,

   but memory's glass cannot be emptied.

It is a storage jar with a burning in the belly,

   somewhere, a spreading anxiety;

only echoes hang over the place

   where one awakens from sleep.

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My life in this world-I've lived it badly to the last.

   But with the first water drawn from the well at dawn,

a single candle stick, and a bowl of rice,

  my mother's mother prayed over 

this prince who was not allowed to play

  beside the stone statue that day.   ​

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3

DISTANCE HOLY MAN

Today, this one day

on this one day called today

I saw the whole of the sun rise

and saw it all set

Nothing more to see-

a swarm of gnats laying eggs, dying

I am still alive,

long past my time to die,

But consider-today, I don¡¯t feel

as if I¡¯ve lived even this single day

He may live a thousand years,

but the holy man

Is but a distance cloud of gnats

4

ELM TREE & MOON

she a dragonfly¡¯s wings,

a filmy, rustling silk skirt,

and a peacock shaft,

a mole upon her body

rise high, shine far

rise high, shine far

5

DESIRE, DEEPER THAN THE MARROW

You can¡¯t throw away an entire lifetime

Even for the sake of a god

Not rising, not sinking,

The mountain peony, just being,

Desire, deeper than the marrow,

Simply enfolded in its leaves

6

WHAT I¡¯VE ALWAYS SAID

Love is the hand of a creeping vine,

green leaves that suck up

the taint of pollution, thye taint of death,

the bright-red liquid metal

rust-water

that flows beneath

a steel-frame rebar concrete wall;

it embraces the whole world all at once.

It¡¯s a clutching clot of leaves.

Love is not talk-

it is the root of life.

You cannot name it, cannot draw the shape

of its heart and mind.

It is a clutching clot of leaves,

the dirty seed-leaf of the wild rose,

the bud-leaf of an oriental oak.

7

THE SOUND OF ANCIENT WOOD

One hears the sound of ancient wood

In the heart of an old tree

Only when the core is surely rotten

When all the straight limbs have snapped

And, naturally, some woody toxin

Remains in the crooked stump

8

THE DANCE & THE PATTERN

Late fall afternoon,

when death

crack-crackles underfoot,

sitting in a half-tub

of creek water,

I feel my forehead-

the thrum of ironing sticks

I¡¯ve not heard

Since my mother passed.

9

SPRING

even April exhausted, all agleam

with its nightly rain-

my mother, knuckles bit and bloodied,

salved with wormwood-

why only azaleas blazing

on her grave?

flowers blown and faded till

the whole mountainside¡¯s bruised

and over the pass to Shooting Star shrine

a cuckoo¡¯s cry

rises up, fresh,

like a wound in the heart

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