THE NEW ARTERY
The train is galloping along the New Artery
It is silent and still in the compartment
Some reading newspapers
and others chewing their midnight snack in a low noise
New Osaka and Nagoya receding serenely in the dark
Looking at the gulf of thousands if miles
I’m suddenly gripped by loneliness
When a Japanese man gives me a cup of strong coffee
I know I’m taking myself to an alien land
However, I have an illusion that the New Artery is paved
On my grassland in Mongolia
Since the New Artery is taking me to the prosperous Tokyo
Why do tears run out of my heart?
LEAVING SEOUL
Leaving Seoul
Many mountains and much water
Let me part from agony of the world
It’s impossible to part from agony
Crossing the sea
Someone will clasp my hands firmly
Leaving Seoul
Many trees and many birds
Part from the unfairness of human
Part from my own wound
Crossing the sea
Someone will stroke my heart
A SNOW SCENE
One morning
Snowflakes dancing
Falling on my face
On the street, the trees,
New Year will come
Cold the North’s night sky
Stars see me
Being 40 years old
But then
Blood like bright red dawn
Now I am anemic
Still to write poem
Until the latest day
Like Van Gogh
To sow the seeds
Of the sunflowers
Across
The entire world!
ECHO
A full moon is rising in the sky
We are driving to the Mid-Gobi
The night of the Grassland appears blue and vast
A caravan can be seen moving forward slowly
Yet their figures disappear in a flash
As soon as we get close to them
I must find back this mysterious figure
I would like to see the color of this kind of figure clearly
I would like to touch their bodies with my hands
The rock paintings
On the bronze-like rocks
Are comforting my lost eyes
THE SUNNY HIGH PLATEAU
From Altai to Khingan Mountains
From Baikal to Dalan Mountains
Sheep and cattle can be seen strolling while nibbling
On the sun-worshiped hillsides
Eagle rotate soaring
Takhi have returned to their native place
Since the first morning when human being appeared
My forefathers began to hunt and fish here
From rivers to forests, from the Grassland to Gobi
The endless fresh flowers and milk
The legacy as kind-hearted as stars
Have made up my life and my future
* Takhi, Mongolian wild horse and Called Przewalski horse in Europe.
WAKING UP FROM A DREAM WITH A START
In the flowering shrubs of love
We two chase like bees
And exchange gifts for love
In the grave of love
Both of us stop our hurried steps
To pour out the miss in the past each other
THE WHITE NIGHT
Snowflakes, fluttering about
Falling on your long lashes
Waiting to be melt
In your eyes full of tenderness
On the tip of your tongue
I am melting like a cheese
YOUR SMILE
I
Come from
The vast steppe
So I have never seen so many beautiful flowers
Just as you have never seen snowflakes
Floating gracefully in the night sky
You are a girl living in the Southern Land
I cannot take you away
You
Seem like a blooming lilac
Dying my clothes fragrant
I will return to the coral Gobi alone
And miss this green banana woods day and night
In this world
I am willing to give up anything
But your smile
IT IS NOT TRUE I HAVE NO HOMETOWN
It is not true I have no hometown
I say so to myself
While I feel sad
It is not true I have no hometown
My hometown is a rising sun
But now it looks like a cool moon
With knitted brows
It is not true I have no hometown
My hometown is stack of hay
Who will turn it over to dry?
NORTH WINTER
I cannot trust
That after me
The north and south will remain as now
This Morin khuur’s* bow
Sometimes sheds sorrowful tears
I will grow old, and then fall sound asleep
On the north Asian grasslands
Some morning, icy frozen Northern land
It will come back in my eternal peace veins
Like the rivers Kerulen, Onon, Tuul
*Horse head fiddle was called Morin khuur in Mongolian.
EYES
The still web, it’s five fifty-five
At dawn, I open my eyes
How could I stop this raid?
On my heart turned into an ocean
Until nights are weary
Arms are like wrinkled sheet
Suddenly eyes cry out in sound
I don’t know how to close my eyes
TO ESENIN
The crescent hanging over the cattle pen
The mist among birches
The deep and wide Volga
I have taken up your poems again
Like taking up a sharp sword
Sergei Esenin
But I’m not crazy like a tiger as I was
Nor will I roar like a wolf
My voice is the silent Gobi desert
And the sap running along the bark
The hurt heart
Is trembling like a rolled-up woolen ball
You seem even younger than I
But you’ve crumpled your youth
Like nibbling a flower
Like you, my beloved ones have gone into morning cloud
But I see the blizzard, the villain in the world
Committing crimes still like a lunatic
Maybe you, Sergei, have turned into the brilliant bronze
I know life happened only once
And love can be shown only once
I, too
Have been drunk on the Mongolian plateau
I’m proud of your mother the Russian
Becoming staunch in the test
I’m ashamed of the Tartars
Invading Riazan your homeland
The agony now is pressing on my bosom like lengthy years
Well, don’t mention that
Frankly speaking, I, too, expect there to be a day
When I die kissing the dear one’s lips
Without resenting, or shouting or weeping as you did
In the sweet dream where I chew cheese
Under the grey canopy of the homeland