Shining Morning
The lads have left for their bracken-digging:
Our bamboo-grove is empty now:
The chess-board lies there, tossed aside,
Its pieces scattered anyhow.
Knight-crooked in my drunken stupor,
How should I know if it's only day
Which fills me with this sense of shine?
Chong Chol (1536-1593)
Blind Luck
When I was a brat the liveliest fun
My gutter nature found
Was to follow the blind and hoot and clap
As they tapped their way around.
Yet now, when I come to think of it,
Isn't the laugh on me?
Would my guts have festered as they have,
Wouldn't my heart still be
Lyricsome-light had these damned eyes
Not seen what could but see?
Anonymous (18th century)
Summer Night
Green willows. Six or seven houses,
All with their brushwood gates shut tight,
All with their bamboo-curtains raised
To let the moon's amazing light
Amaze, in each, the two or three persons
Sitting watching. Summer night.
Chong Ji-sang ( -1135)
Sorcerer
In a lost green valley of the southern hills
Three furrows leapt from my plough.
Next, I climbed the magic mountain.
Just below its brow
I found and dug these eldritch roots
To plant in rows of three.
And now I wait. For a mulberry crop?
Why not for a deep blue sea?
Sin Hum
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