The graveyard sleeps beneath a quilt of cloud.
For twenty years it has grown—
not in stone,
but in the hearts that refuse forgetting.

At the center of its hush
stands a house raised on bones.
Beneath its roof,
an old man receives a newborn
into arms that tremble with memory.

Rain begins—Birna’s rain—
a soft repentance falling from heaven.
Each drop whispers:
You are remembered.

The child draws a single breath,
and the air quivers with mystery.
In that fragile intake
lives the ancient ache of creation—
the longing of all flesh to be seen,
the wound of God still open in the world.

Hands shaped by labor and grief
lift the small body like an offering.
The dry rivers in his palms
begin to flow again,
carrying five thousand years of prayer,
of nations that spoke
and then fell silent.

The river returns—
moving through his hands,
spilling onto Birna’s grave
like mercy recalled.

The cities groan—
Ulsan, Masan, Guro, Changwon—
air thick with metal and sweat,
streets heavy with unsung hymns.

In a narrow alley,
a carpenter sets down his saw.
His shoulders, bent like reeds in wind,
shake beneath the long weight of time.
The earth, noticing him, exhales.

Still, from the shadows,
a voice begins to rise—
half lament, half alleluia—
Namdo’s sorrow
turning slowly toward light.

It moves through factories and smoke,
through fields and rivers,
until even the dead can hear.

The child, who had known only tears,
dies before the dawn.
Yet in that last release of breath,
the rain comes again—
clear, swift.

It falls on the grave,
on the cracked palms,
on the waiting earth.
In that quiet descent,
the sky bends low,
and God breathes
through the wounds of the world.

Then the heart understands:
suffering is not the end,
but the doorway
through which hope enters.

Every tear
is a seed of resurrection.

– 1994

Painted by WanHee Yoon