— By Kang Hyeon-deok
There was a day
I went to weep
but could not.
My grief was pushed aside
by a sorrow that came before it.
The day I gave away
even my own tears
to that woman's
trembling shoulders.
So you had nowhere fit to cry, even when you wanted to. So you slipped on your shoes and rushed off, silently, without your family knowing. So sorrow, too, comes in turns. So you gazed at the grief ahead of yours and poured out your tears for it. So you turned back without ever crying the cry that was truly your own. So you went without any reservation. When I tried to reproach you for going later than others, it turns out that wasn't it at all. Your steps, so heavy on the way there, grew far lighter on your way out. Like a cicada that has emptied its bag of cries over a whole summer. So you came with the very strength of having pushed forward the grief that lay ahead. Next time, when tears pool again, picture the far-off plains of Liaodong, that "famous place for weeping." And when you haven't even the strength to cry, try to remember what a poet once said — that "there is no night when no one weeps."
