— Lee Sang-guk
If someone
likes things that come free
the way snow or blossoms do, that means they are poor,
and if they are poor, they have little to apologize to the world for.
Someone once said
that trying too hard
to stay alive is itself a disaster,
and if you are poor, your beloved children have nothing to fight over,
and when you leave this world you go light, as if heading out on a picnic.
Poverty is never alone, anywhere, at any time.
That is why it is strong,
and poverty is expensive.
Love and poverty cannot be hidden,
and there is a reason
most people live poor.
So you are telling us that to live well we should not love what comes free, but earn it through effort? That the poor owe the world fewer apologies — though you said nothing about what they owe their families? Your words about how struggling to stay alive is a disaster: I can guess at the meaning, but spreading it would be hard. Have you never seen poor children quarreling over a single side dish while rich children fight over a fortune? Have you never seen the temple of capitalism, built day and night on the belief that it is better to weep in a luxury apartment than to laugh in a shack? What you mean, surely, is to love the things money cannot buy, not to covet what belongs to others, and to choose poverty for a reason. Only, the poverty you speak of is so radiant, and its state — or its summit — seems so hard to reach, that since you happened to call this "Excuses," I am picking a quarrel.
