Born in Ansong (Kyonggi Province) in 1921, Cho Byung-hwa has published some forty collections of poetry. He has received many major literary awards and has occupied leading positions in such organizations as the Korean Poets'Association, the Korean Writers'Association, and the Korea Arts Council. He was for many years professor at Kyunghee University before moving to Inha University (Inch'on), of which he is now professor emeritus. He is president of the Korean Academy of Arts and Letters.  
The poetry of Cho Byung-hwa has always been very popular among the younger generations, particularly, for its easily accessible expression of the emotions that are familiar to many young people: solitude, love, separation, loneliness, and death. In many poems he evokes scenes witnessed on journeys abroad, a familiar technique of exotic displacement that was particularly effective at a time when most Koreans could never hope to travel.  
The universality of his themes is matched by the accessibility of his poetic language, which is always simple and personal. He frequently uses fragmented grammar, broken phrases, to suggest inner tensions and the turmoil of his mind. He is attentive to the little people, the weak and fragile, that cross his path. The love evoked in his poems is mostly one-sided, an unrequited longing, rather than a mutual and fulfilling union. His favorite mood is the melancholy one, and that has earned him the admiration of many simple readers throughout the years. He is still widely read.  
The critical reception of his poetry has been mixed. There is a harmony in much of his work that pleases, but there is no great sense of innovation, no striving after aesthetic quality for its own sake. For some critics, his vision is too self-centered and too little aware of the social or political dimensions underlying the realities he evokes. The sheer volume of his published work, and the lack of great variety or of dramatic development within his writing career, has probably done him a disservice.  
The poems that follow are all taken from the collection Pamui Iyagi (1961) translated by Kevin O'Rourke and published as Night Talk (Seoul, 1988). Of these poems, the author writes: "The poems in this volume are the expression of my personal dark night of the soul during the period immediately before and after the April Revolution of 1960. The historical pain of Korea lives on. I shall be content if these poems provide some small measure of relief to those who share this pain with me." 
 
 

Selections from Night Talk (Pamui Iyagi) 
 

2 

Where I am living now  
   is a suburb of existence  
   where at times a poem seeks me out;  

oak, pine, wild vine, cotton boll,  
   a profusion of bush clover in flower,  
   a forest of oak,  
   where even you can seek me out;  

a place  
   which makes me long for the company of men,  
   scattered here and there at ten, twenty,  
   and thirty li intervals;  
   a place where I wait for morning;  

a low hedge, a lamp burning,  
   and though the night is spent,  
   much remains to be said;  

a place  
   where those who have harvested this world  
   leave, bound directly for the sky;  

a place where the voices of the dead  
   seem closer than those of the living.  

Where I am living now  
   is a suburb of existence,  
   the nearest place to the sky,  

where night and day  
   depart and meet in whispers. 
 

13 

What's truly sad  
   is that you and I  
   have come to reckon money;  
   and what's truly sad  
   is that you and I  
   have come to reckon  
   social prestige.  

And the corollary is  
   that we must part without  
   ever truly knowing each other.  
   Spring and summer  
   have vanished in insignificance.  
   This life, this hour,  
   given but once to you and me,  
   has seeped away.  
It is autumn now.  

This is the parting place,  
   beyond time,  
   in memory's place,  
   repeatedly,  
   after a brief handshake  
   with self.  

What truly makes me desolate  
   is that you and I  
   have come to reckon money  
   which is neither yours nor mine;  
   and what truly makes me desolate  
   is that you and I  
   have come to reckon social prestige  
   which is neither yours nor mine.  
   And the corollary is  
   that we must live in the same world  
   and leave it  
   without ever truly knowing each other.  
 

15  

Loss is wisdom gained;  
   relinquishing desire is freedom gained;  
   loneliness is a release from prison  
   ─waiting for self in solitude.  

You and I live in mutual dependence,  
   no further apart,  
   no closer together.  

Keeping our distance,  
   to treasure tomorrow together,  
   to spend tomorrow freely together,  
   to reduce each other's burden.  

And then that final imperative  
   ─parting.  

Inevitably we part,  
   never to meet again,  
   but that belongs to a comer of tomorrow;  
   our dialogue is till then.  

Loss is wisdom gained;  
   relinquishing desire is freedom gained;  
   loneliness is a release from prison  
   ─waiting for self in solitude.  
 

32 
 

Give me that pure pool of humanity  
   that ripples the same  
   in every corner  
   from one tiny pebble thrown.  

Give me that hurting conscious pool  
   that's dyed the same  
   in every corner  
   from one single blood drop bled.  

Give me that merciful pool of kindness  
   that filters wet the same  
   to every corner  
   one silent teardrop shed.  

And then give me that human eye  
   that lets men see each other,  
and give me the human lips and words  
   that let men speak to each other,  

and give me the human ears and head  
   that can hear the wail of existence  
   as it spills its blood unto death  
       like a young azalea.  

Gather up all the forces  
   of humiliation and unmercy,  
   Silla, Koguryo─the downward streams  
   of one people, one fence for good living,  
   and give me that sky, that land,  
       those friends.  
 

45 
 

Man aspires to immortality  
   because he is not immortal.  

Drifting, drifting,  
   he aspires toward possession  
   because he does not possess.  

Death is the  
only greatness.  

Man rears death,  
   taking his leave  
   in some suitable place.  

The more desolate,  
   the easier to go.  

Possessing  
is the great vanity.  

Life comes from pain.  
   Born from the penetration of pain  
   we return through that pain.  

Listen to that tearful cry,  
   the moan of blood pain  
   accompanying the birth of a life.  

Listen to that soundless cry,  
   the moan of lone pain  
   accompanying a life going out.  

Ah, man aspires to immortality  
   because he is not immortal.  

Drifting, drifting,  
   he aspires toward possession  
   because he does not possess.  

The final harvesting of pain  
   is the only greatness.