As a child on the beach at home I often gazed
at the emerald sea.
Waves pounded toward me,
I only drew back, unable to meet them
and the sea remained simply the sea.
The laden clothes-line stretched heavily,
the dry washing flapped and flew.
At last the disease I had long been carrying,
born of the washing (the other world’s flags)
and the sea (this world’s body)
infected my gentle velvet-jacketed sister.
It was buried for good in the lungs of paulownia
flowers.
My sister had no boy whose name she could call,
she only called “God! God!” or sometimes Father.
With my skinny body I heard a sobbing,
a field of reeds rustling in my sister’s veins.
The next spring lingered in the backyard then left, yet
still spring remained in some late-blooming flowers.
White rhododendrons kept it until summer came.
All through the summer I simply ate dirt and cried.
The rains poured down and the broad salting farmlands
behind the village were flooded deep.
Houses floated by all day long in a world of water.
Autumn came because my sister grew more beautiful.
Really. Yes, truly. Sister was the cause of autumn.
As I washed in cold water wrinkles covered my green brow
and after I washed, the autumn pretended to be the sky,
standing there crying.
Then a far away whistle would sound boldly and at that
autumn would grow deeper still.
Even when a few rare leaves were left on the trees
which made them bare trees for other people,
my sister would talk with those leaves.
She spoke quite well, without alphabet or bird song.
And all the while, just below the ground of water-clear
gardens, roots were frolicking as they should.
The sky pretended to be our world, it was really Heaven
and because it shouted as it grew even bluer,
I gave up washing my eyes, for somewhere out there
my destination was all the while waiting for me.
Once sister started to cough, I suddenly grew sad.
I threw back my head and stared at all of Nature’s works
yet my foot did not stir, I was avenged by senility.
Sister coughed blood until I could not endure it,
and could not lament it.
She bundled the blood up in her skirt. She collapsed
That day I saw. Sister’s inner being was there outside,
in her virginity lay the ebb and flow of the nearby sea.
After that my sleep was my sister’s withered sleep.
Her room was full of the eardrums of quick and dead,
I watched outside her door as night went plodding by.
The day that she took off her velvet jackeet,
I walked out and back along the winter shoreline
with my sister’s hours of ecstasy prolonging.
Early the following spring my sister’s pale hand dropped,
pointing to the empty clothes-line spangled with mist
and bade the world farewell.
I did not cry, I lay close against her china-white pillow
and followed her death for a while, then returned.
In her coffin the dark was unsure whether it was sister
or I, or some kind of joy.
--Ko Un
Translated by Brother Anthony of Taiz’e / Young-Moo Kim
