Jeong Ho-seung's poem (28)

To a Blade of Grass

Translated by Brother Anthony and Susan Hwang

Washing my elderly father’s body

is like washing my own corpse.

Returning home after weeping outside all day long,

taking my elderly father to the communal bathhouse

and washing him thoroughly

is like washing away the tears from my own corpse.

Wiping away the last traces of water from my father’s body

then slipping on a fresh pair of underpants

and respectfully trimming his finger nails

is like cutting the nails of the tears from my corpse.

Today, too, returning home after weeping all day long,

I wash my elderly father’s body.

Then following the evening insects

I hang my lamp on a blade of grass

and lay my corpse down.

Filial piety echoes in this poem, and an awareness that our parents grow old and die before us, then we will do the same, since mortality is our common destiny in nature, every body will one day be a corpse.