My love said he would come at moonrise;
The moon has risen, but he has not come.
I presume that where my love lives
The mountain is so high the moon rises slowly.
translated by Sung-Il Lee
Korean poet
Rainy Night by Chong Ch’ol
Cold night rain rustles the bamboo,
And crickets tell of autumn near my bed.
How can I hold the fleeting years at bay?
I cannot keep my hair from turning white.
translated by Sung-Il Lee
The Pear-Blossom Pavilion by Shin Cham
Thirty springs have passed since I first came here;
Visiting the site of my past pleasure only grieves my heart.
In the yard, the pear tree still blossoms,
But those who sang and danced are gone.
translated by Sung-Il Lee
Shijo 2270 by U T’ak
In one hand I grabbed a bramble,
in the other a stick:
the bramble to block the advance of age, the stick to stay approaching white hair.
White hair, though,
outwitted me: it took a shortcut here.
translated by Kevin O’Rourke
Shijo 2060 by U T’ak
The breeze that melted the blue mountain snow
blew suddenly and was gone.
I’ll borrow that breeze a moment and blow it across my head,
to melt
the frost lodged so long in these locks.
translated by Kevin O’Rourke
A Fisherman by Song Kan
Mountains rise over mountains and smoke from valleys;
the dust of the world can never touch the white gulls.
The old fisherman is by no means disinterested;
he owns, in his boat, the moon over the west river.
translated by Kim Jong-gil
Written on a Volume by a Friend by Yi Sack
The path runs aslant, deep among the jumbled mountains,
at sundown, cattle find their way home on their own.
This is indeed the wish of an old man come true:
sweet grass, faintly misted, reaches to the sky.
translated by Kim Jong-gil
The Moon in the Jar by Yi Kyu-bo
A monk coveted the moon in the well
and fished it up with water into a jar.
But back at the temple, he will find
when the jar tilts, the moon spills.
translated by Kim Jong-gil
To the Moon by Song Ik-pil
When on the wane, you are always impatient to wax,
but how do you so easily wane after waxing?
You are full only once in a month’s thirty nights:
man’s mind in a lifetime is exactly the same.
translated by Kim Jong-gil
I Did Not Know Before by Sowol Kim
I did not know before
that the moon rises every night.
I did not know before
that I would miss you so much.
I did not know before
how to watch the brightest moon.
I did not know before
how the moon would be my sorrow.
translated by Jaihiun Kim & Ronald B. Hatch
Leonard Durso 