Author: Jeong Ho-seung
Translated by: Brother Anthony of Taizé, Susan Hwang
Publisher: Seoul Selection, 2016
Original title: 꽃이 져도 나는 너를 잊은 적 없다
Link to online store *
From the publisher’s website:
Don’t cry.
To be lonely is to be human.
To go on living is to endure loneliness.
Do not wait in vain for the phone call that never comes.
When snow falls, walk on snowy paths,
when rain falls, walk on rainy paths.
A black-breasted longbill is watching you from the bed of reeds.
Sometimes even God is so lonely he weeps.
Birds perch on branches because they are lonely,
and you are sitting beside the stream because you are lonely.
The hill’s shadow comes down to the village once a day because it, too, is lonely.
And a bell’s chime resounds because it, too, is lonely.
– “To Daffodils”