Jeong Ho-seung's poem (15)
The Road to Sorrow
Translated by Brother Anthony and Susan Hwang
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As someone who sincerely loves sorrow
I set out along an evening field path headed for sorrow.
An unfamiliar bird vanished at the end of the path,
the flowers blooming along the edge of the path shook in the breeze,
while I, who sincerely caress sorrow,
looked toward the evening’s setting sun
as I walked along the field path headed for sorrow.
One who had been waiting for somebody who did not come though he’d waited
passes me with sorrow before him,
while an oak leaf falling somewhere
abandons sorrow and follows me.
As someone walking sincerely along the path headed for sorrow,
when I looked back after walking on endlessly
people were putting down life and burying themselves in the evening glow.
In order to meet one of the most beautiful people in the world,
I again set out along the evening field path headed for sorrow.
As in this poem, Jeong Ho-seung often encourages his readers to never give up, to keep looking forward hopefully, to accept the sorrows that are inevitable in human life, and turn them into sources of rapture. He often evokes the landscape of earlier days when everyone lived in rural villages, walked along paths between rice-fields at sunset, simply in harmony with nature.