Well—yesterday and today
flow at the same unhurried pace.
Time does not change its speed
for our sake.
Yet in this house, after my wife has gone,
everything stands where it always stood,
and nothing is the same.

I have left untouched
the work she once tended,
yet I am busier than before.
The small tasks of the yard,
even the afternoon habits that once continued daily,
seem to hang suspended in midair.
Even two modest meals
are pushed back again and again.

The two small dogs
who once followed her
out to work and into the backyard
now cling closely to me,
waking, sleeping, breathing
in time with my steps.

The words I once wrote
within a flowing consciousness
have now dried up,
becoming thin, distracted murmurs.

At the neighborhood park,
beside the baseball field,
three families I did not see yesterday appear,
playing catch
in the pale winter sunlight.
One family has brought a dog.
As I am leaving,
another family arrives—
one large dog, two strollers,
the slow procession of a New Year’s afternoon.

Somewhere on this earth
war continues.
Someone stands on the ruins,
with not even tears left,
lifting empty eyes
to the darkening sky—
as the first day closes.

Others wake late
after a night-long celebration
and step into the narrow crevice of life—
the gap of injustice,
the weight of laws that press down the weak,
the economic pressure that will not let them rise.

Within that unspeakable pressure,
han gathers—
wordless sorrow,
a heated silence boiling
in the deepest chamber of the soul,
unbearable tears—
the moment just before it turns into light.

Tomorrow may be heavier.
And the sun
may not rise.

Even so—
within mystery, there is a current.

Even in darkness that offers no explanation,
a rhythm remains—
unheard,
yet faithful to the end.
Not every dawn arrives as light;
some dawns come as depth,
as silence learning its own pitch.

What does not rise
still resounds.

In the conductor’s lifted hand,
the sweat on the brow,
the breath restrained by strings and voices,
moments gather,
shaking the concert hall
and stilling even the audience’s breath.

That current—
within every eye and ear,
the trembling gesture,
the oboist’s fingertips,
the soprano shaping the air—
each carries heart and soul
across the narrow rope of miracle,
one note, one rest at a time.

Before such labor,
such fierce devotion,
no one can remain still.
Mind, nerve, and muscle rise together,
and sound and silence
begin to dance.

Every heart leans toward beauty,
becoming one body, one harmony—
ripples widen, circles spread,
and passion, already
on the first day of the year,
at the beginning of its three hundred sixty-five days,
may begin somewhere in a back alley,
breathing hard.

Yesterday and today are the same.
And yet—
people shape the day
in entirely different ways.

Some call this eternity.
Some call it perfect beauty.

And within that beauty,
the Eternal Other—
the silent God—
is enthroned.

– TaeHun Yoon