Poems by
Ynhui Park
Translated by Brother Anthony of Taizé
The Poet
Born in Korea in 1930,
Ynhui Park (Pak In-Hŭi)
spent many years studying and teaching abroad. After receiving a
doctorate in
French literature from the Sorbonne, in Paris, in 1964, he went
on to take a
second doctorate, in philosophy, at the University of Southern
California (USA)
in 1970. From 1968 he taught in Boston, until his retirement in
1993. Then he
returned to Korea and for several years taught philosophy at
Pohang University
of Science and Technology. From 2002 he taught philosophy as a
Distinguished
Professor in Yonsei University, Seoul, for some years. He
publishes in English
as Ynhui Park, that being his original given name, but his
writings in Korean
are publishesd using the pen name Park Yeemun (Pak I-Mun).
He continues to
publish widely, mainly in Korean
now, but he has published several books and papers on
philosophical topics in
both French and English. He has published a number of volumes of
poetry in
Korean: the translated titles are Snow on the Charles River
(1979), Dream
of a Butterfly (1981), Shadows of Things
Unseen (1987), Echoes of
the Void (1989) and Morning
Stroll (2006). This last earned him the 2006 Incheon
Award. In 1999 he
published a volume of poems written in English, Broken Words,
which was
translated into German and published as Verbrochene
Wörter in 2004. Another volume of Germans
translations, Schatten
der Leere, was
published in 2009. The poems
translated here were published in Korea as a volume of selected
poems in 2006.
Tangled
piercing
like barbed wire
poetic words
inflict nothing but pain
while on the meanings
scratched, pierced
blood pools thick
Alienated beings in agony
poetic words
pierced when language is
read
and the truth grasped
breaking when cut
seek the meaning beyond
meaning
that is no meaning
Dense woodland
revealing a stone wall
a valley revealing a lake
an isolated house
a wood-built New England
house
I want to live alone
I want to think alone
I want to be absorbed
in really deep contemplation
Like a lonely house
With birds and
roe deer
and insects
and alone
I want to exist thoroughly
Night sky
Meanings torn to shreds
thoughts scattering in every
direction
words dispersed
destroy the order of the
night sky
glittering like broken bits
of bone
Strewn like debris
the stars’ stories
echo in the void
Insects keep breeding
animals keep copulating
people keep dying
they’ll keep being born and
increasing, too
On the Earth that goes
floating off through endless
space-time
philosophers keep thinking,
cogitating,
others keep suffering and
writing poems
meaningless thoughts
meaningless words
The meaning of meaning,
light of being
in the night sky above the
dark abyss of
being
like stars’ debris the light
of meaning
glitters
Night sky of being.
Sham-seeming life
gauze-mask-like thoughts
is there no removing the
mask from
consciouness?
Disposing words without
meaning
Writing poems without
meaning
Writing poems like scraps of
debris
scraps of shattering
consciousness
Stars
nucleii
their order
identically beautiful
the infinite disorder
of meanings and senses
with the disorder of
existence and
human solitude and clamor
and
the endles void
meaning’s abundant disorder