Watch and hear Ko Un reading this poem

 

Two files: File 1     File 2

 

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Visit to a birch grove

 

Before I reached Chilhyŏn Mountain on my way from Kwanghye-wŏn one February,

I found myself approaching a broad valley thick with white birch trees.

Someone said: Go on! and gave me a push in the back.

I turned to see who it was. There was no one there. But look!

How honestly the cast-off boles of the white birch grove confront the world!

They are altogether indifferent to the distant hills that are fully accustomed to snow.

The winter trees alone know nothing of depravity.

 

There are no lies in sorrow. And how can anyone not weep at life?

In our country, for centuries weeping was really women¡¯s work: weeping that would find its comfort in itself.

The birch trees live to themselves but make me one of them.

Not everyone can come here, but it doesn¡¯t matter, the trees make themselves one with each of us and they are beautiful!

 

As I beheld the trees, the branches of the trees, the trembling of the tree-tops in the sky, I grew too proud with myself and the world,

and longed to be burdened heavily, heavily burdened with bundles of firewood.

Or rather, I longed to become gentle and mild like a new bud born of this cold solitude;

gentle and mild as the well-cooked meat at a crossroads tavern.

Because my life was too dogmatic, because I was harsh, even to the breeze.

 

How long ago was it? This kind of place?

This place has that intensity we find only once in ten years. That revered intensity! I feel a lump rising in my throat,

my heart knows that this intensity is not addressed to me alone, it is addressed to the whole wide world.

The time is coming when people will realize that they are each one part of a multitude.

When I was a child, I already grew old. Arriving here, now I have to be born again.

So in this moment, one with the white birch¡¯s quite natural winter,

I return to a state of charm and prettiness, growing up as another person¡¯s only child.

 

I turned my back on the road leading down to Kwanghyewŏn and headed for the rugged mountain path leading towards windswept Chilhyŏn Mountain.