Ease of Understanding = Good? Not Always.

St. Paul’s Cathedral in need of renovation need not be razed down to the ground. There will be ways to make its beauty intact after the upkeep. Some visitors may not understand some part of it, but that is okay. They can stay and take in its beauty. Understanding may follow if you stayed long enough. Our faith is not so much about accuracy as about mystery. Some words are better-suited to pull us deeper into the center of what it is we believe in and yearn for. Superficial Christianity is deplored by many concerned religious writers. Language habit may have in part to do with it. People don’t stay. They pick up a McDonald sandwich and run. The same can be said about their reading. Superficiality is rampant and clichéd ideas are parroted. Certain words make you stay when others don’t. When you stay, there is a better chance for a deeper understanding.

 - Gene Ghong, On St. Paul's Cathedral

Falling Apart

by Gene H. Ghong

Falling apart is easy to do - just let go.
Would I be conscious of my being in pieces?
There is the rub. As much as I'd want to let go,
I fear being in a strange place
forever looking back on the other side
that once was a familiar but painful place.
It is the fear of not knowing what it's like
and the knowledge of what I'm leaving behind.
If it's like a membrane penetrable back and forth
that separates those flimsy structures,
then it would be too painful -
traveling between the Land of the Whole
and the Underworld of the Pieces.
Ay, the rub, sticking intolerably. That insolubility!

Giorgio Skory

_________________________

자기가 가진 능력과 가능성을 힘 있는 자에게 보태며 달콤하게 살다가 자연사할 것인지, 그것을 힘없는 자와 나누며 세상의 불공평, 기회의 불공평과 맞서 싸우다 장렬히 전사할 것인지, 혹은 평생 새장 속에 살면서 안전과 먹이를 담보로 날 수 있는 능력을 스스로 포기할 것인지, 새장 밖의 위험을 감수하면서 가지고 있는 능력의 최대치를 발휘하여 창공으로 비상할 것인지.

What would it be? To live out your days in comfort, offering your potential and capabilities to the rich and powerful, or to use them for the poor and powerless, fight against inequality of opportunity and of the world, and die a brave death; to settle in the life in the bird cage for security and food, or to soar into the sky to the best of your strength at the risk of the dangers outside the cage?



한비야, ‘지도 밖으로’, pp. 13-14.
Trans. Gene

Home by Jung Ji-Yong

Ever returning home,
I see it
isnowhere to be seen.

Foxes have holes
and birds in the air have nests.

But my mind is a cloud without home
wandering over foreign ports.
But I have a restless heart,
a cloud drifting over foreign ports.

- trans. Gene

고향에 고향에 돌아와도
그리던 고향은 어디러뇨

산꿩이 알을 품고
뻐꾸기 제철에 울건만

마음은 제 고향 지니지 않고
머언 항구로 떠도는 구름

Windowpane 1 (정지용, 유리창 1)

Windowpane 1

I see a glimmer in the windowpane,
A glimmer, cold and sad.
I, standing blankly, blow on it, blow on it—
Clouding the glass: The glass clouding,
The road beats its frozen wings. The road its frozen
The road's benumbed wings beating.

I wipe the glass and look,
And wipe and look again;
For the dark waves of night
Keep coming in and going out,
Lapping the windowpane.

The glass is set with watery stars, twinkling. Stars, watering and twinkling, in the glass are set. Moist stars, twinkling, are set in the glass.
Set in the glass are moist stars, twinkling.
In solitary abstraction at night
I wipe the glass alone.
Alas! he has flown flew away.
With the rupture of blood vessels in his chest,
Blood vessels of his chest burst,
he had flown flew away like as a wild bird.

Jung Ji-Yong
Translated by Gene

Thorn of Passion

In my heart I had
the thorn of passion.
One day I pulled it out.
Now I feel no heart.

Antonio Machado
Translated by Willis Barnstone

Chrysanthemum 미당 서정주 국화 옆에서

This is one of the Korean poems that are close to my heart. I used to know the poet. A great man! All too human! When you get to know him, you get to know what it is like being a Korean. Here is my translation of one of his poems. I had never thought I would attempt to translate it into English - for I had thought it was an impossible task, especially this particular poem - until I read Brother Anthony's translation of it. I was slightly ticked off. His translation is not bad, but I don't feel the rhythm of the original in it. Mine may not be up to par but I feel closer to the original with my own translation. I'm still working on it, so you'll see the progress as it develops.

First, Brother Anthony's:

For one chrysanthemum to bloom
the nightingale
must have wept like that since spring.

For one chrysanthemum to bloom
the thunder
must have rolled like that in sombre clouds

Chrysanthemum! You look like my sister
standing before her mirror, just back
from far away, far away byways of youth,
where she was racked with longing and lack.

For your yellow petals to bloom
the frost must have come down like that last night
and I was not able to get to sleep.

And here is my translation. I'm only halfway through, and I have blank verse in mind.

Perhaps it was for a Chrysanthemum
The Cuckoo started singing so in spring.

Perhaps it was for a Chrysanthemum
The thunder Thunder rolled so in dark clouds. (01-13-09)

Sweet Flower! my sister do I see in you,
My sister, having left the lonely path
Of bygone youth behind,
With all its heartaches, missing and longing for,
Now standing before her looking glass.

Perhaps it was for yellow petals of yours to bloom
It hailed Hail was falling so last night
And I was kept kept me awake.

I will finish it when I'm drunk some other time. Done! (01-14-09) But I'm still not happy with it at all. I will come back and work on it again some other time. *** Drafts are born to cry for revisions.***

So Chong-Joo (1915-2000)

Ah! this picture is as I remember him when I saw him before I left Korea.

First they came for someone else.

Valery Tumbayev

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out -
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the communists
and I did not speak out -
because I was not a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out -
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me -
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Martin Niemöller

To this I'd like to add:

Then they came for the Palestinians,
and I did not speak out -
because I was not a Palestinian.

Then they came for me -
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Listening

Gregory Colbert

VLADIMIR: Silence!
ESTRAGON: I hear something.
POSSO: Where?
VLADIMIR: It's the heart.
POZZO: (disappointed) Damnation!
VLADIMIR: Silence!

Back in Heaven

Johann Fournier

Back to Heaven

I will go now, and go back to Heaven;
The morning dew and I -
The morning dew that dies as touched
With dawning sunlight's gleams -
We will go there hand in hand.

I will go now, and go back to Heaven,
Twilight and I -
Playing on the shore -
Signaled by Cloud, When the Cloud gives us a wave,
We will leave, and go there together.

I will go now, and go back to Heaven,
Drawing to a close my sojourn here,
This beautiful world;
And back in Heaven will I say,
"It was beautiful, my sojourn there. . ."

Ch'on Sang-Pyung
Translated by Gene

(One will see that my translation of this Korean poem is quite different from Brother Anthony's. I wouldn't venture to say that my translation is better than his. It's just that my sensibility urges me so and translate it the way it is above.)