'Civil Service Romance'

The Letter 

Subject: Improvement of Bilateral Ties

Dear Miss:
With due respect and humble submission
I beg to welcome you to neighboring section.
I am coming the other day.
early for change
in view of new Boss
and you are also coming up the same stairway.
Power is failing as per schedule
and the lift will not move.
Not even down.
Five floors is no joke for fair sex
but still you are climbing and smiling.
I am sweating but you are glowing.
and becoming very beautiful.
Hitherto also you are pretty
needless to say. This is the face
I am saying to myself
to expedite launching of vessels.
Fair Helen, I am mentally drafting
make me immortal crew member.
You are joining as lower division assistant.
but you are Upper Division lady to me.
I was lower division initially
and rose by dint of good performance
I will teach sweet lady to follow suit
I am thinking at once: how to do
the buttering of boss. 

- Kaiser Hamidul Haq

College Days ( 대학 시절)

Trashed books piled underneath wooden chairs.
A forest of cottonwoods was deep and beautiful,
But even the leaves were used as weapons in it
Determined youths arrived at this beautiful forest
Then passed through it with their eyes closed.
On the top of stone steps
I read Plato, and I heard gunshots each time.
When magnolias bloomed, friends dispersed to jail or army.
A poet in the year below me confessed of being an informant.
There was a professor I admired but he never spoke.
After a few winters I was left alone,
And then it was graduation. I was scared to leave school.

--- Gi Hyeong-do (Source: Published collection of poems The Black Leaf in My Mouth (입 속의 검은 잎) and translated by Jack Saebyok Jung) 

To Paint The Portrait Of A Bird

First paint a cage

With an open door
Then paint
Something pretty
Something simple
Something beautiful
Something useful
For the bird
Then place the canvas against a tree
In a garden
In a wood
Or in a forest
Hide yourself behind the tree
Without speaking
Without moving...
Sometimes the bird will arrive soon
But it could also easily take many years
For it to decide
Wait
Wait if necessary for years
The rapidity or slowness of the arrival of the bird
Has no connection with the success of the painting
When the bird arrives
If it arrives
Observe the most profound silence
Wait until the bird enters the cage
And when it has entered
Gently close the door with the brush
Then
Erase one by one all of the bars
While being careful not to touch any of the feathers of the bird
Then make a portrait of the tree
Choosing the most beautiful of its branches
For the bird
Paint also the green foliage and the freshness of the wind
The dust of the sun
And the noise of the creatures of the grass in the heat of summer
And then wait for the bird to decide to sing
If the bird does not sing
It's a bad sign
A sign that the painting is no good
But if it does sing it's a good sign
A sign that you can sign.
Then you gently pull out
One of the feathers of the bird
And you sign your name in a corner of the painting.

---Jacques Prévert

The Brook

I come from haunts of coot and hern,
I make a sudden sally
And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley.

By thirty hills I hurry down,
Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorpes, a little town,
And half a hundred bridges.

Till last by Philip's farm I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.

With many a curve my banks I fret
By many a field and fallow,
And many a fairy foreland set
With willow-weed and mallow.

I chatter, chatter, as I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

I wind about, and in and out,
With here a blossom sailing,
And here and there a lusty trout,
And here and there a grayling,

And here and there a foamy flake
Upon me, as I travel
With many a silvery waterbreak
Above the golden gravel,

And draw them all along, and flow
To join the brimming river
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

I steal by lawns and grassy plots,
I slide by hazel covers;
I move the sweet forget-me-nots
That grow for happy lovers.

I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,
Among my skimming swallows;
I make the netted sunbeam dance
Against my sandy shallows.

I murmur under moon and stars
In brambly wildernesses;
I linger by my shingly bars;
I loiter round my cresses;

And out again I curve and flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

---Alfred Lord Tennyson

A Battlefield Song

where is the lion?
when will he come?

I do not have a turquoise-mane
my turquoise-mane is the forest of Ganden burial ground,
the deer and doe living in that forest
and the lonely sun of the Himalayan sky.

this head is lonesome like a barren land
these hands are lonely like a banner
and the window on the wall of time is forsaken.

on the fingertips of a writer
the dazzling flame of a stone’s life stories,
carries all miseries of the river
a moment at the crest of a ship’s flag.

I do not have a turquoise-mane
my turquoise-mane is a bright torch
burning in the pitch darkness of night
with its handles like a warrior’s hands—
a desolate snow mountain,
blessed by the sun and moon.

like a pillar, the ancestors are desolate,
the naro in the records of ancestors renounced
even the palace gate in my dream is deserted.

a symphony carries the melodies of aspirations
from the sunlight of southern horizon
and disturbs the silence of Drakmar,
the sacred mountain of royal lineages.

where is the lion?
when will he come?

---Tashi Rabten

Murderer

you agitated my rivers
blighted flower buds
fouled the sweet-scented air
harassed the birds of the land arrayed in turquoise petals

you ripped the ropes of my old tent
spoilt the firewood of my earthen hearth
set toxic leaves on fire and
inscribed evil spells on the flags erected outside my gate

you crushed the horns of my wild yaks
scraped vulture bones for flutes
and agonised horses with chained hooves

in this land of incessant hell
should I still, intently, receive atonement
from you, the incarnation of evil?

---Tashi Rabten

City of Faith

As well as Buddhism and Christianity
Some gods dig water channels like Allah
Some are the Holy Marys pushing wheelchairs in the park
Where ghosts thrive, gods thrive too
As shadow follows the light
Where light shines strongest you feel secure warmth
But don’t fear the places where ghosts roam
Sometimes the city’s depths are lighter than its surface
This is the advance of civilization.

---Tien Huan-chun