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Indangsu sea, shine dark blue

Ko Un, Ko Un poetry, Buddhist, Buddhist poetry, Zen / Chan poetry, [TRADITION SUB2] poetry,  poetry by Ko Un
(1933 - ) Timeline

Original Language
Korean

Buddhist : Zen / Chan
Contemporary

Indangsu sea, shine dark blue,
come rising as a cloudlike drumbeat.
The waters, the sailors who know the waters, may know
the dark fate of the world beyond
that lies past the path that sometimes appears,
the weeping of children born into this world,
and the sailors may know my daughter's path.
How can the waters exist without the world beyond?
Full-bodied fear
has now become the most yearned-for thing in the world,
and my daughter's whimpering stillness in the lotus bud will be such;
might love be a bright world and my eyes be plunged in utter darkness?
Daughter, already now the waters' own mother,
advance over the waters,
advance over the waters
like the mists that come dropping over the waters.
My daughter, advance and travel through every world.
Shine dark blue, Indangsu. Weep dark blue.

 

 

 

Themes

  Birth, Rebirth
  Drum
  Light
  Lotus
  Lover and Beloved


Recommended Books


Flowers of a Moment, by Ko Un / Translated by Brother Anthony of Taize
Little Pilgrim: A Novel, by Ko Un / Translated by Brother Anthony of Taize
Ten Thousand Lives, by Ko Un / Translated by Brother Anthony of Taize
The Three Way Tavern: Selected Poems, by Ko Un / Translated by Clare You
What?: 108 Zen Poems, by Ko Un

 

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Ivan M. Granger's original poetry, stories and commentaries are Copyright © 2002 - 2011 by Ivan M. Granger.
All other material is copyrighted by the respective authors, translators and/or publishers.