Miscellaneous records on Korean poetry, culture, and more.

  Summer Days Pass.                           By Han Gang On the morning I returned—having briefly seen a friend dressed in black before the funeral procession began—late-summer trees stood bathed in sunlight outside the car window    The trees would not know I had passed by Just as I cannot now recall the appearance of even a single one of them Just as I never saw a single leaf turn over        Our meeting was all too brief Even had we shuddered and wept, there was no gap between us; no breathing space for a sigh to slip through. Not even if I had reached out my hands in silence, or if they had turned—startled—toward those hands ------------------- Encounters in our lives often seem all too brief. Yet, we frequently face one another in such a lackluster way— right up until the moment the lid closes on the final parting. It doesn't take immense energy to let the heart glow with warmth and...