Afterlife
I won't come back as a human.
Ever.
For the afterlife,
an animal will do.
Not a big one;
small will do.
Even
so small it can hardly be seen.
An amoeba will do.
I didn't want that a few years ago.
I could have been reborn
not a man but
an ignorant woman who had lost a few
of her eleven children.
Shoe would do.
But I won't be born as a human being ever again.
____________________
Ko Un
The Three Way Tavern
Selected Poems
translated by Clare You & Richard Silberg
University of California Press 2006
You can read lots and lots of Ko Un, that good.
But I picked out one pumpkin from the patch.
