Jeong Ho-seung's poem (8)

Song of Parting

Translated by Brother Anthony and Susan Hwang

My dear, you are leaving.

If you would only leave just a little later

it will not be too late for me to love you,

even after you have left.

I will leave ahead of you

the place you are leaving

and become a sunset glow

bathing your departing back.

Straightening my clothes, in the darkness

when people’s houses grow dark,

I will become a star

singing for you.

* * *

No theme is more popular in Korean poetry than that of lovers’ separation. Poet Jeong Ho-seung plays with the images familiar from countless poems and songs, adding in the humorous suggestion that the departing lover might delay the departure “just a little” as there will be plenty of time for loving afterward in any case.