He was twenty-six,
already standing at the edge of life.
So he wrote his prayer on the staff lines—
the sorrow of a mother
who had buried her son.

There was only one place for such sorrow:
beneath the Cross.
There Pergolesi gathered the soul of the Virgin
into a prayer shaped by ending.

That prayer did not end there.
It continued—
through Bach’s faith,
when belief survived
by holding the balance of sound,
when the anguish of a young soul
rose like final smoke from a dying flame.

The world had already begun to split,
torn apart—
each body grasping to preserve itself.
This is where wars begin:
not in noise,
but in mute confusion,
peace taken hostage,
shared without consent, consumed without union.

Walls rose everywhere—
inner walls, outer walls.
One named itself freedom,
the other, order.

Money moved, weapons followed.
Law was written, then made a servant of power.
And the old questions blurred into doubt:
Is peace possible?
Is communion possible?

So every war is evil.
Still, arsenals grow.

We speak of coexistence,
of shared life, shared flourishing.
We invoke Hongik Ingan (弘益人間).
We pray that heaven’s will
might be done on earth.

Yet the sorrow does not end—
an aria searching for its cadence.

As if the ancient serpent
had finally broken open the box,
releasing what crawls and devours,
without limit, without remorse.

Now pain has no horizon.
Healing has long been forgotten.

The world grows coarse, violent—
quick hands of deception,
faith that cannot be trusted,
hearts that no longer know how to repent.

Some call this a new order.
Some dare to name themselves god.

Yet even there, a sound remains—
not erased,
following a trace of beauty,
a resonance not yet silenced.

Between a severed heaven
and a worn-out earth,
that sound settles in the chest as Han(恨)—
a grief beyond speech.

And so, in the darkest place,
the sound becomes prayer,
then another sonata,
then a symphony:
a voice of living together,
growing together,
not alone.

A thin beam of light
touches the ground.
Someone draws cold water from a well
and drinks without shame,
beneath the open sky.

A pole is raised.
One bird descends.
Another waits
on a distant mountain ridge.

Rossini’s Stabat Mater begins to flow.

Slowly, the world opens—
as if heaven leans nearer,
as if earth remembers
its first intention.

Dvořák,.then Vivaldi,
Mother’s prayer waits
beneath the Cross,
where loss is deepest.

And there, quietly,
Han turns—
not into answers,
but into praise.

Ah—
such severe beauty.
And still,
beauty.

— Tae-Hun Yoon, (Rewrite, 1/9/2026)