Thanks to daeguowl for researching this interesting question, and for coming up with some additional poems to consider.
And a special thanks to Brother Anthony of Taize for giving of his time, and providing translations for the two key poems which our visitor was interested in. Here they are:
Memoirs
by Ko Un
Translated by Brother Anthony of Taizé and Lee Sang-WhaI was twenty.
For no reason I wearily loathed the apricot-flowered spring days.
I was starving.
I wanted to fall
Clang!
on the bitterly cold snowfields
of Irkutzk in Siberia — forty below.
I wanted to fall, shot, killed like a young Decembrist.An obtuse age,
all I hoped was a breathless Sturm und Drang.I felt as if a wizard’s hand had been cut off with a straw-cutter.
When a hoe was thrust into the earth’s hide
the clods of earth wept wildly.I was sixty.
I omitted all kinds of disruptions.
Above all I disdained belated excuses.
As ever
lovely clear days were revolting.
Out on plains whose flesh
was being struck by knife-blades of thunder and lightning
through dark, black clouds
I had to go racing on,
unspeakably happy
all the way
all the way to the other side.Away with every kind of resignation.
Away with every kind of nirvana.Even on beyond sixty, I still acted childishly.
All I had was a few friends,
only one lung.
For the sake of the absence of the other
I was obliged to go to another place.
Still I bear Che Guevara in mind, that evening star, my retarded discovery.The latter half is an explosion of the first.
and
Before the Grave of the Poet Kim Namju
by Min Yeong,
translated by Brother Anthony of TaizéNamju, here I am, I’ve come.
But no matter what I say, Kim Namju
the poet lying in his shabby grave here in one corner
of Mangwol-dong Cemetery, makes no reply.Namju, dreaming of revolution, singing of revolution,
you spoke of driving monopoly, capital
and oppression from this land, and of founding
a country of working folk, you, the poet who sang
that you had never thought you would enjoy
the fruits of that revolution, though you fought
like a blazing flame of fire — is that why
you lie buried here all alone like this,
in a patch of ground smaller than a prison cell?Namju, here I am, I’ve come.
This cowardly workmate of yours who used to loiter hiding
behind your back, busy just keeping up with you
as you put your life on the line and fought,
I’ve been unable to sport a flower since you died,
just living for peace at any price, a defeated pawn of capitalism.
It’s only now that I’ve come to visit you.Before your grave, where a pile of cigarette butts
replaces incense, with empty soju bottles rolling around
like on a city garbage-dump, as I gaze at the faded photo,
where you’re still smiling that sunny smile,
and smoke a cigarette, I ponder
why Che Guevara died,
why Che Guevara just had to die . . . .
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