Classic Poem

May my love become an alder tree
of Kumsong in Hoeyang, and
I an arrowroot vine in
the third month or fourth:
Like a spider's web around a butterfly,
the vine goes around the tree,
tightly this way, tightly that,
wrongly loosened, properly wound,
bound, then loosened from down below
all the way to the top,
tightly winding round and round
without a single gap, and
unchanging, day and night,
it's coiled around, twisting.
Though, in the heart of winter,
we may bear wind, rain, snow, and frost,
could we ever be apart?