A Moonlight Jar
It was the first full moon of the New Year. We had a few drinks and walked out along the mountain path. We followed the moonlight along the path that ascended towards Gojeokchi, the peak of the mountain. We found a pale clearing. The wind through the pines paused on its wayward sojourn.
I collected the moonlight in a small clay jar. Though it leaked through our fingers like beach mud, it fell back into the surrounding luminescence and was not lost. I picked up a piece of thread and the scent of fish spread out into the air and filled our nostrils. We inhaled deep and long.
Our words rose up into the paleness of the lit air and the light conveyed them back down, depositing them into the ice by the roadside where they would remain in the still silence before being transformed by the changing of the seasons. When the ground is warmed by the coming of spring, they will seep, greener and greener, into the fields. Their disappearance needn’t cause you any despair. The moon remembers.
I took that jar and placed it on the window ledge to age for one rotation of the universe. If you are a novice, I recommend adding newly fruited pine cones to fill with fragrance the vacancy of midnight. Then, here again after one thousand years, I will break the seal and pour out the moonlight wine.
Jeong Han-yong: poet, born in 1958, poetry 『How to Make a Mink Coat』 etc.
Translated by Seth Feldman(Canada, b. 1977) is a teacher, writer and musician
