Editor’s Note
This poem brings Koyaanisqatsi to mind, with its slow moving, panoramic sights. The scale is vertical—geese cruise overhead and dragons bellow far below, as pagodas press into mountain soil. It’s what a 16th century general on a reconnaissance mission on a mountain-top may have seen or heard, according to his wistful poet sister.
Translator Ian Haight explains: This poem is translated from the original hansi, which is the Korean use of classical Chinese to write poetry. Nansŏrhŏn imagines her elder brother’s travels into exile, and each section of the poem represents a different imagined experience of the journey.
—Mani Rao
The Bombay Literary Magazine
1.
Below a pavilion on a mountain peak, a pillar presses
into earth.
In the northeast, drifts of clouds
lightly caress
the distant borders.
In Chulwon Valley, dragons long ago left
a newly-founded dynasty—
near nobles’ tombs, burnt hues
of autumn. Geese pass
overhead.
A mountain range, lithesome,
limits the broad plateau, spreads across three counties—
a river cut
into nine canals
divides
the plain.
After my day’s climb, I see
the sun’s twilight—
overwhelmed, leaning on my sword’s hilt,
I sing a forlorn song
friendless.
2.
Atop a teetering ladder, I cut through clouds—
snow-tipped summits invade
the sky, mark Chinese lands. The range
ends near Three Rivers County—
the eastern landscape rolls
the rivers far away. A smudging
air of dust
wisps
into evening—
the lone castle of my friend
on the horizon.
Pastures of grass
please 10,000 horses,
fattening early for winter.
Looking east, a small keep beats its drums,
wishing to be led
by a cunning
general.
3.
Ahead, the rock-ridden path rises into mountain mist—
my horse’s hooves tread onward.
The trail ends.
I rest at the pinnacle, as if in the sky.
This late season of harvest
a dragon bellows from the depths
of water hollows.
Drizzling rain subsides.
An arc of colors glistens above falls.
A general’s drums and flutes
beat
a hastened march
to the borders—
a prize princess, a token
of peace
for the Huns, intones
her sorrow
through lute strings.
Soldiers devoted to the King
sing “Leaving the Castle” at dusk—
their lotus-engraved swords
hungry
in petal-carved scabbards.
4.
Over 10,000 li, proudly,
the general’s swords advance—
a white granite tower
crowns a mountain, stands
in slanting sunlight
in the sky.
A river streams west
along three counties—
a southern range bends, obscures
a plain’s grasslands.
Clouds thicken, then rise below me—
in my eyes, the great ocean,
vague, distant—
climbing ever higher,
I turn back:
a horse from the borders
whinnies in wind
hungry for war.
Translator | Ian Haight
Ian Haight’s collection of poetry, Celadon, won Unicorn Press’ First Book Prize. With T’ae-yong Hŏ, he is the co-translator of Spring Mountain: Complete Poems of Nansŏrhŏn and Homage to Green Tea by the Korean monk, Ch’oŭi (forthcoming, White Pine Press). Other awards include Ninth Letter’s Literary Award in Translation, and grants from the Daesan Foundation, the Korea Literary Translation Institute, and the Baroboin Buddhist Foundation. Haight’s poems, essays, interviews, reviews, microfiction and translations appear in Barrow Street, Writer’s Chronicle, Hyundai Buddhist News, Full Stop, MoonPark Review and Prairie Schooner.
Translator | T’ae-yong Hŏ
T’ae-yong Hŏ has been awarded translation grants from the Daesan Foundation and Korea Literature Translation Institute. With Ian Haight, he is the co-translator of Borderland Roads: Selected Poems of Kyun Hŏ and Magnolia and Lotus: Selected Poems of Hyesim—finalist for ALTA’s Stryk Prize. Working from the original classical hansi, T’ae-yong’s translations of Korean poetry have appeared in Agni, New Orleans Review, and Atlanta Review.
Author | Nansŏrhŏn
Nansŏrhŏn (1563-1589, pseudonym “White Orchid”) was a sequestered noblewoman who lived during the 16th century CE in Korea. Considered by many scholars to be Korea’s greatest female poet, she died at the age of twenty-seven
