© TaeHun Yoon, 1994, then 2025

The graveyard sleeps beneath a shroud of clouds.
For twenty years it has grown — not in stones, but in the hearts of those who cannot forget.
There, in the middle of its silence, stands a house built over bones, and under that roof, an old man receives a new child into his trembling arms.
Rain begins to fall — Birna’s rain — like a soft repentance from heaven.
Each drop speaks: You are not forgotten.

The child breathes once, and the air trembles with mystery.
For in that fragile breath dwells the secret ache of creation —
the yearning of all flesh to be known, the wound of God still open within us.
The old man’s hands, gnarled by labor and sorrow, lift the small body like an offering.
The dry rivers of his palms begin to flow again;
they carry the memory of five millennia,
of nations that prayed and fell silent.
Now, the river returns — flowing down through his hands,
falling upon Birna’s grave like mercy remembered.

The cities groan — Ulsan, Masan, Guro, Changwon —
their air thick with sweat and metal, their streets heavy with unspoken hymns.
In a narrow alley, a carpenter lays down his saw.
His shoulders, bent like bowed reeds, tremble under the weight of time.
And the earth, seeing him, sighs.

Still, somewhere in the shadows, a voice begins to rise —
half lament, half alleluia —
the sound of Namdo’s sorrow turning toward light.
It passes through the factories and the smoke, through the fields and rivers,
until even the dead can hear.

The child who had known only tears dies before the dawn,
and yet — in that falling of breath —
the rain returns again, swift and clear.
It falls upon the grave, upon the cracked palms, upon the waiting earth.
And in that quiet descent, the sky leans low,
and God breathes through the wounds of the world.

Then the heart understands —
that suffering is not the end,
but the doorway through which hope enters,
and every tear,
a seed of resurrection.

Painted by WanHee Yoon