Crape-Myrtle Tree
Do Jong-Hwan(Poet)
Translated by Brother Anthony and Jinna Park
There’s no flower that blooms then stays beautiful for ten days,
nobody receives unending love for as long as they live,
people say that,
yet there’s a flower that blooms for three months and ten days
from high summer until early autumn, and
it’s not true that there’s nobody who’s always loveable all through life,
not true that there’s nobody like a flower who, if you turn away
after being together, you yearn for the moment you turn away.
On close inspection,
it’s not true that a single flowers blooms beautifully for a hundred days.
Countless flowers wither as they bloom,
and as they fall other new buds emerge and bloom
thus the crape-myrtle tree stays bright.
Though the flowers fall, the tree remains in bloom as beautiful as ever.
Inside itself, silently, it knows its petals wither
so it does all it can to keep flowers coming into bloom again
over and over again, with no one the wiser.
* 《Cultura》 2022 August(Vol. 98) *
