Rain falls.
I sit at my desk.
The desk quietly says:
Once I was a flower, was a leaf, was a stalk.
I was a long root beneath the ground
that stretched as far as yonder desert oasis
A scrap of iron on the desk says:
I was the uvula of a wolf wailing alone on moonlit nights.
The rain stops.
I go outside.
Thoroughly soaked grass says to me:
Once I was your feelings of joy and sorrow.
I was your lives and your songs.
I was your dreams.
Now I say
to desk
to iron
to earth:
Once I was you, was you, was you.
Now I am you, I am you.
Ko Un (b. 1933) was born in Gunsan, Jeolla Province. Among over 70 volumes of poetry, his major poetry collections include The Nirvana Sensibility (1960), Going to Muneui Village (1974), Early Morning Road (1978), Star of the Fatherland (1984), Garden Verses (1986), Lineage of Ten Thousand Men (Vol. 1, 1987, Vols. 2-26, 2007), Baekdu Mountain 1 (Vol. 1, 1987, Vols. 2-7, 1994), The Dark of Your Eyes (1988), Seon Poetry, What? (1991), Dokdo (1995), Whisper (1998), Poems I Left Behind (2002), and Empty (2008). Going together with the modern history of Korea, the poet has explored, for all his life, the new way of poetic words opening the rebellious spirit of the age in a more vivid and real way than the history book does. He is the recipient of countless literary awards including Korean Literature Prize, Manhae Prize in Literature, etc, and has been nominated as a candidate for the Nobel Prize. As his poetry books have been translated into various languages, he has appealed to many readers of other countries.
