Loss

Loss
by Ko Un

There's a trail uphill that leads somewhere.
After reading just a few lines written in an old dead tongue.
I have to head for that hill
wearing canvass shoes made from a grey satchel.
Somewhere a lost object is in a hurry to be found.

There's a trail uphill that leads somewhere.
The text on the next page of a book is waiting
and someone is listening there, having brought a dead tongue to life.
With the crunch of dead leaves underfoot
and the sunlight lingering on my worn clothes,
I sense that my heart is growing several times wider.

That object must be somewhere inside.
An unfamiliar grasshopper jumps, startled by a sneeze
provoked by the spicy odour of dry grass or fodder.
The first day is colder than the thirty-first,
yet the lost object is still nowhere around.

There's a trail uphill that leads somewhere.
At home, some elder's first death anniversary awaits.
Behind me someone is pestering my heart,
saying: there, there, or there,
but to me it's full of reconciliation; there's nothing there.
Ultimately, I suppose, that lost object will likewise be named in a dead tongue.

- Copied from Brick, a literay journal, number 78, winter 2006, page 29
10:35 pm
sunday, 31 august 2008