Jeong Ho-seung's poem (2) - The Korea Times

I do not love people who have no shadows.

I do not love people who do not love shadows.

I love people who have become the shade

beneath a tree.

Sunlight, too, needs shade to shine bright

and dazzle the eyes.

Sitting in the shade of a tree and watching

the sunlight sparkling between the leaves,

how beautiful the world is then.

I do not love people who have no tears.

I do not love people who do not love tears.

I love people who have become one teardrop.

Joy, too, is no joy without tears.

And is there ever love without tears?

The sight of someone sitting in the shade of a tree

wiping away another's tears,

what quiet beauty that is.

The Korea Times has begun to publish Jeong Ho-seung’s poems every Thursday. Jeong is the

most widely read and well-loved poet in Korea today. His work expresses the joy and sorrow of life

in ways that are immediately accessible to people of all ages. He has won the So Wol Literary

Award, the Jeong Ji-yong Literary Award, the Sanghwa Poetry Award, and the Gongcho Literary

Award. The fundamental contrast in “The People I Love” is between “shadows” in the first stanza

and “tears” in the second; the “shadows” turn into the pleasant shade beneath a tree, shelter in

which to discover the beauty of the world in sunlight. The tears are needed because there can be

no true love without them, without pain and sorrow. But at this point the poem returns to the shade

of a tree, where now two people are sitting, one wiping away the other’s tears. That compassion is

seen to be the finest, quiet beauty.