Last year, I lost my treasured daughter; this year I’ve lost my beloved son. Piercing tears throughout our family’s land— they lay side by side in their graves.
The emptiness of wind through white poplars— candles of wispy light glimmer among pines. I scatter paper money calling your souls with pure water poured over your graves.
You will know each other’s spirits— every night, play together as you once did. Though a child now grows in my womb, how long will it live?
Blank, I sing my tears, bitterly breathing air.
Nansŏrhŏn (pen name “White Orchid”) was a sequestered noblewoman who lived during the sixteenth century in Korea. Considered by many Korean scholars to be Korea’s greatest female poet, she died at the age of twenty-seven.
Ian Haight’s collection of poetry, Celadon, won Unicorn Press’ First Book Prize. Poems, essays, interviews, reviews, microfiction and translations appear in Barrow Street, Writer’s Chronicle, Hyundai Buddhist News, Full Stop, MoonPark Review and Prairie Schooner. For more information please visit ianhaight.com.
T’ae-yong Hŏ has been awarded translation grants from the Daesan Foundation and Korea Literature Translation Institute. Working from the original classical hansi, T’ae-yong’s translations of Korean poetry have appeared in Runes, New Orleans Review, and the Atlanta Review.
