Korean poet Ko Un came to Toronto in 2008, to receive the Griffin Poetry Prize Lifetime Recognition Award. I’d never heard of him though he’s perhaps the major 20th-century Korean poet. Last night I finished reading his poems in The Three Way Tavern (University of California Press, 2006). This morning I want to start the book at the beginning again.
Also this morning I was sent a link to photographs of Toronto’s downtown streets, occupied by heavy chainlink fences and uniformed security people for the Prime Minister’s indefensibly expensive road show of the G20/G8 meetings that will take place this next weekend.
Here are the opening lines of Ko Un’s final poem in The Three Way Tavern—I offer them for their notion of a different kind of fence:
Coda: The Thuja Fence
Because there are few reasons to come and go,
the road is often bare,
like a man after weeping.
Soothing sadness,
the dark blue thuja trees
have shot up since last year and
seem to be hiccupping among themselves.
Some parts of this earth are made
of unfinished business.
So sadness has brought us here, you and I.
Even a man with breathing heels
knows the sun is setting on earth’s unfinished work.
…
By Ko Un. Translated by Clare You and Richard Silberg. Copyright, University of California Press, 2006.
Thuja by the way are a family of cypresses.
For more poems by Ko Un go to: http://jacketmagazine.com/34/ko-un.shtml
To hear him read in Korean, with Richard Silberg reading the English translations of a few poems from The Three Way Tavern check out his youtube site: www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHb_fQiVT_Y
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