Ko Un Poem by Matthew Christopher

' There is no one but Van Gogh',
the sign read, nailed to the classroom door.

Reading and weeping, wander, violence,
brothers, neighbours, friends, relations.

First love.

Carry corpses up the hill to the monastery.

Emptiness.

Then, one rainy day, dancing naked in the shadow of the temple,
they bury the skull.

Conspire, insight civil war.
Dark cell, realize: 'because of literature'.

'I have a life that should have ended many times,
eventually my death will be literature itself'.

(Ko Un)