Ko Un

Why I’m going to the Taklamakan Desert: the emptiness there. Why I’m going to the Taklamakan Desert at seventy-five, leaving all words behind: the cry of the emptiness there. Why I’m going to the Taklamakan Desert: I can no longer stand the world’s greed or mine. There, in the Taklamakan Desert, the silence of a thousand-year-old skull. Translated from the Korean

What a relief you cannot live everywhere all at once. Today, here in Diamond Cave, there's no longer any reason to live. Stay one or two days: this world & the Other are drained of difference. Wind blows. As a pearl is born at seabottom in agony out of oyster flesh from within the most obscure darkness here the wind blows from the depths. I want to travel far & then return. The wind blows as if I were eighty-five, maybe eighty-seven.

Someone’s coming from the other world. Hiss of night rain. Someone’s going there now. The two are sure to meet. Translated from the Korean

You fools who ask what god is should ask what life is instead. Find a port where lemon trees bloom. Ask about places to drink in the port. Ask about the drinkers. Ask about the lemon trees. Ask and ask until nothing’s left to ask. Translated from the Korean

All day long I've been hidden, enmeshed, locked in the shadow of the holy mountain, my body covered with shame. I'd hoped there would be a dog barking furiously. Unable to go forward, unable to go back, at least with the sound of a dog barking I'd attain something. . . something. Instead of a dog barking there was silence, then the sound of a drum beaten loud & fast by a young nun. Into this temple come none of the grand sounds, none of the great thoughts. In the cabbage field, heads all the same size are profiles of young novice nuns & the priestesses sitting in Unmun Temple. Young faces like dew, like hoarfrost.