— By Moon In-soo
The cosmos flowers clap and clap their hands, and all of them laugh.
When clouds pass by, when flocks of birds pass by, when grandfathers and grandmothers pass by,
the cosmos flowers that swayed shyly, ever so gently,
burst into giggles and double over with laughter the moment a train passes.
The train, in a foul mood, races away even faster,
and the cosmos flowers laugh until they nearly faint.
The cosmos stays rooted in one place its whole life. It cannot move even a hand's breadth. The train runs its whole life. It meets mountains and fields and streams. Settling down is usually a symbol of confinement, and moving on a symbol of freedom. Children in villages of settled people long for the train. In the end they buy a ticket and leave in search of hope beyond the vanishing point. But is it not the case that the train is the one racing along, laughing and delighted, while the cosmos flowers are left struggling with an aftershock too great to bear? What the poem points to must lie beyond physical phenomena. Living as we do in an empire of speed — faster, farther — where are we ultimately arriving? Has the cosmos already arrived, while the train has arrived nowhere at all?
