Saturday, August 07, 2004
Korea: Imjingak, the freedom bridge and the North.
A poem that I have been thinking about tonight in response to my visit today:
Shredded bodies, shredded aches, barbed wire, never ending, never ceasing, never receding,
Always makes our bodies quake...and shake...
When will reunification come?
Stiffened soldiers marching in
Stepmarching more rigid than the
Pigeons that eat crumbs and foliage between words, between the worlds, between the precise steps!
When will reunification come?
Little children laughing on a humid summer day,
Licking an ice cream,
Thanking God it is Tuesday and they don't have to pray.
But a tear comes into their eye when they see their grandmother bow,
And tell them a story of when she was a girl
and she had to leave her town:
Her town that was lush and green.
Where everyone knew her name and watched her keen.
This grandmother, she had to leave her grandmother and run to unknown future in the South,
Below the Han, below what she knew
Beyond her friends,beyond her posessions very little (what she had, too!)...
She crossed her river Jordan,
She crossed her clothes like sins threadbare,
She crossed the Han with a hope,
That her life would somehow end what the war gave her: Despair.
And with all her tiny might, 50 or so years later, she bent on bended knee,
And remember her now faded,jaded homeland and how it once was part of a great tree.
After the right time of tears and feelings and dreams of the past,
She slowly arose from her knees at Imjingak,
And hugged the tender little one standing beside her.
She told the eleven-year-old girl that life was getting better,
She showed the girl how birds feeding on abundance of South Korea was a sign that pain
of the loss would end very soon, more quickly than how the pain began.
She told the girl that Korea's suffering was coming to an end.
For the old woman knew her days were also coming to an end like the North's days.
She told the girl that children would be playing together throughout the nation,
and Nations would marvel at the peace of Korea and
Follow suit with supplications for the rest of the world.
The grandmother saw the end of the highlands crying and the rivers sighing,
the trees bending and the leaves shedding, and the sunshine blinding.The grandmother knew that her day was over and the legacy she would leave the little one would be like a levee in the storm to all of wearied and in need of -soulful lifetime of rest.
She saw countrymen and how they would cheer, for the moments were coming closer to when the military jackets will be shed and the helmets forever removed from every native son's head.
The longing for family would come and be proved right, at last
The judgement would be finished the sentence would be passed.
Our people would never again misconstrue
The end of the war by historians and politicians would finally acceptably be reviewed.
Yes, the day of our dream has finally come:
When will reunification come?
We don't have to ask anymore for it his here and we are finally, from everlasting to everlasting, free!
---by Ken Harley 2004
Shredded bodies, shredded aches, barbed wire, never ending, never ceasing, never receding,
Always makes our bodies quake...and shake...
When will reunification come?
Stiffened soldiers marching in
Stepmarching more rigid than the
Pigeons that eat crumbs and foliage between words, between the worlds, between the precise steps!
When will reunification come?
Little children laughing on a humid summer day,
Licking an ice cream,
Thanking God it is Tuesday and they don't have to pray.
But a tear comes into their eye when they see their grandmother bow,
And tell them a story of when she was a girl
and she had to leave her town:
Her town that was lush and green.
Where everyone knew her name and watched her keen.
This grandmother, she had to leave her grandmother and run to unknown future in the South,
Below the Han, below what she knew
Beyond her friends,beyond her posessions very little (what she had, too!)...
She crossed her river Jordan,
She crossed her clothes like sins threadbare,
She crossed the Han with a hope,
That her life would somehow end what the war gave her: Despair.
And with all her tiny might, 50 or so years later, she bent on bended knee,
And remember her now faded,jaded homeland and how it once was part of a great tree.
After the right time of tears and feelings and dreams of the past,
She slowly arose from her knees at Imjingak,
And hugged the tender little one standing beside her.
She told the eleven-year-old girl that life was getting better,
She showed the girl how birds feeding on abundance of South Korea was a sign that pain
of the loss would end very soon, more quickly than how the pain began.
She told the girl that Korea's suffering was coming to an end.
For the old woman knew her days were also coming to an end like the North's days.
She told the girl that children would be playing together throughout the nation,
and Nations would marvel at the peace of Korea and
Follow suit with supplications for the rest of the world.
The grandmother saw the end of the highlands crying and the rivers sighing,
the trees bending and the leaves shedding, and the sunshine blinding.The grandmother knew that her day was over and the legacy she would leave the little one would be like a levee in the storm to all of wearied and in need of -soulful lifetime of rest.
She saw countrymen and how they would cheer, for the moments were coming closer to when the military jackets will be shed and the helmets forever removed from every native son's head.
The longing for family would come and be proved right, at last
The judgement would be finished the sentence would be passed.
Our people would never again misconstrue
The end of the war by historians and politicians would finally acceptably be reviewed.
Yes, the day of our dream has finally come:
When will reunification come?
We don't have to ask anymore for it his here and we are finally, from everlasting to everlasting, free!
---by Ken Harley 2004
