Sleep unfinished drifts into sleep again,
and before my wandering truly ends,
my feet are drawn toward a house of gathering.

The cries of Biafra echo in my ears,
yet they do not slay the truths that have aged within me.
The images of Bengal captured in my eyes
cannot extinguish the child I once was,
cannot murder that tender spark of innocence.

Summer rushed past,
but my wandering faltered, stumbled.
Even the funeral dirge of bare bones
now carries the scent of rotting graves.

I live and die by the song of exile,
wandering as my only refuge,
wandering as my only throne of comfort.

There is a self that cannot come,
a self that has already gone,
a self that was driven away,
and still, a self that waits and watches.

This is the festival of moving cells,
a riot of fallen leaves beneath the wheels of life.
Plague and decay mock the cries of the broken,
the pleas of those who bleed unseen.
Summer crushes the prayers of autumn,
and yet, life presses on.

Thus, summer is frantic,
leaving an empty zone behind,
a place my heart cannot fill.

O wandering soul, incapable of earnestness!
O exiled self, never truly mine!

From every day, every hour, every moment,
suddenly—
tomorrow departs before I can reach it.

Tomorrow, the one I barred from coming,
returns only as sorrow, eternal and unrelenting.

Beneath the blue leaves, deeper than despair,
I carve the hollow spaces,
and with every breaking “today,”
I find within me
the urge to dissolve, to self-destruct.

Yet the broken do not stumble in agony.
O broken one, whose senses are numbed!
This is the end of your weakness,
this is the end of both you and me.

Despair!
Despair!
Despair!

But even in despair, there is a rhythm,
a quiet reflection,
a whisper that waits beneath the leaves:
that wandering may yet find its purpose,
that sorrow may yet be transfigured into grace.

{Beginning Series – Part II}

© TaeHun Yoon, Early Autumn, 1971 (Second year of Seoul Seminary)