Short Poems

Were you to ask me what I'd wish to be
after my death,
I would answer, a pine tree, tall and hardy
on the highest peak of Mount Pongnae,
And to be green, alone, green,
when snow fills heaven and earth.

A toad grabbed a fly in its mouth
and hopped on top of a compost pile.
It looked across at the mountain opposite, and saw a peregrine falcon hovering in flight. The toad shuddered, started, tumbled from atop the compost pile.
Fortunately the toad
was exceptionally agile, otherwise severe contusions would have been

Only the name and nothing more,
—And yet my startled fancy flew
Far away to another shore
—Across the brow of many a hill.
And there again thy face I knew,
—Forgot my pain and slept,
And dreamed my life unwidowed still,—
—And woke and wept.

I return on horseback
to the capital of five hundred years.
Hills and rivers remain the same,
but where are the great men of the past?
Alas, the age of grand peace—
it was only a dream!

I thought for a moment, The bush in the backyard has blossomed:
it was only some of the old leaves covered with snow.

The pigeon
The pigeon
Can coo,
But I like
The cuckoo better
I like
The cuckoo better.

The wind blows the rain into our faces
as we go down the hillside
upon rusted cans and old newspapers,
past the tree on whose bare branches
the boys have hung iron hoops,
until we reach at last the crushed earthworms
stretched and stretching on the wet sidewalk.

If you would let me leave
The cow tethered to the brown rock,
And feel no shame for me,
I would pluck and dedicate the flowers!

The winter afternoon darkens.
The shoemaker bends close to the shoe,
his hammer raps faster.
An old woman waits,
rubbing the cold from her hands.

There is a man of me that sows.
There is a woman of me that reaps.
One for good,
And one for fair,
And they cannot find me anywhere.

Father and Mother, shadowy ancestry,
Can you make no more than this of me?