The Visitor (방문객)

By Korean poet 정현종 (Romanized as Chong Hyon-jong). Chong Hyon-jong (정현종; born 17 December 1939) is a South Korean writer and reporter. The poem appears in his 2009 anthology <섬> (Island).  It was featured in the K Drama ‘Because This Is My First Life’. I spotted this on a blog - https://shiningkorean.com/2017/12/06/that-poem-in-because-this-is-my-first-life/

사람이 온다는 건

실은 어마어마한 일이다.

그는

그의 과거와 현재와

그리고

그의 미래와 함께 오기 때문이다.

한 사람의 일생이 오기 때문이다.

부서지기 쉬운

그래서 부서지기도 했을

마음이 오는 것이다―그 갈피를

아마 바람은 더듬어볼 수 있을

마음,

내 마음이 그런 바람을 흉내낸다면

필경 환대가 될 것이다.

The Visitor

The coming of a person
is, in fact, a tremendous feat.
Because he
comes with his past and present
and with his future.

Because a person’s whole life comes with him.
Since it is so easily broken
the heart that comes along
would have been broken ― a heart
whose layers the wind will likely be able to trace,
if my heart could mimic that wind
it can become a hospitable place.

I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You

By Pablo Neruda

I do not love you except because I love you;

I go from loving to not loving you,
From waiting to not waiting for you
My heart moves from cold to fire.

I love you only because it's you the one I love; 
I hate you deeply, and hating you
Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you
                                                                       Is that I do not see you but love you blindly.

Maybe January light will consume
My heart with its cruel
Ray, stealing my key to true calm.

In this part of the story I am the one who 
Dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,
Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood.

Love, What Is Love

                                                         By Robert Louis Stevenson

Love - what is love? A great and aching heart; 
Wrung hands; and silence; and a long despair.
Life - what is life? Upon a moorland bare

To see love coming and see love depart.

 

Here I Love You

By Pablo Neruda 

In the dark pines the wind disentangles itself. 
The moon glows like phosphorous on the vagrant waters.
Days, all one kind, go chasing each other.

The snow unfurls in dancing figures. 
A silver gull slips down from the west.
Sometimes a sail. High, high stars.
Oh the black cross of a ship.
Alone.

Sometimes I get up early and even my soul is wet.

Far away the sea sounds and resounds.
This is a port.

Here I love you.
Here I love you and the horizon hides you in vain.
I love you still among these cold things.
Sometimes my kisses go on those heavy vessels
that cross the sea towards no arrival.
I see myself forgotten like those old anchors.

The piers sadden when the afternoon moors there.
My life grows tired, hungry to no purpose.
I love what I do not have. You are so far.
My loathing wrestles with the slow twilights.
But night comes and starts to sing to me.

The moon turns its clockwork dream.
The biggest stars look at me with your eyes.
And as I love you, the pines in the wind
want to sing your name with their leaves of wire.