Four poems

I'd like to buy her some toffee
but I don't have a daughter

as I pass a sidewalk store in autumn.

* * *

Exhausted
the mother has fallen asleep
so her baby is listening all alone
to the sound of the night train.

* * *

Frogs croaking in flooded paddies—
if there really is a world beyond,
echo far enough so my dead brother can hear.

* * *

A boat whistles in the night.
For a moment I too long to sail away

but merely pull the blanket up over the kids.

—Ko Un

Translated, from the Korean, by Brother Anthony of Taize, Young-moo Kim, and Gary Gach.

(Alf, please skip.)