Kim Jeong-hui: The Complete Poems, Volume 9, Part 2 — Lantern Light and Limitless Plain

Poems 19–36 from the Wandang Jeonjip, Volume 9

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This is Part 2 of the complete English translation of Kim Jeong-hui’s poems from the Wandang Jeonjip; it covers Volume 9, entries 19 through 36, moving from seasonal lyrics and social occasions through Buddhist mountain temples to a remarkable sequence of poems written on the vast Manchurian plains and at the edge of the sea.

If Part 1 was dominated by scholarly tribute — poems written into the dense literary-social network of the Beijing and Seoul intellectual worlds — Part 2 opens that world out. The dense allusiveness is still present, but the occasions become more varied: a mid-autumn night, an early summer garden, a lantern festival gathering, temple visits in the mountains, a rainy Third Month when a hoped-for gathering dissolves, farewells to friends taking up posts in remote provinces.

And then, in the installment’s final movement, something changes. Poems 33 through 35 document Kim’s experience of the Manchurian plains and the Shanhaiguan coast — a landscape so geographically extreme that it forced a different kind of thinking. The poems written there are among the most philosophically ambitious in the collection: a meditation on the curvature of the earth, an observation about sunrise timing that quietly asserts Korean priority over the Chinese mainland, a summit view that spans sea and steppe simultaneously. These are poems written at the literal edge of what Kim’s world contained, and they have an openness that the more socially embedded verse does not.

The installment closes with a gentle return: a collaborative poem about watching a waterfall by moonlight, moonlight teaching old stones to nod.

中秋夜戲拈 (Playfully Composed on Mid-Autumn Night)

Period: Exact date unestablished; pre-exile period (before 1840).

Form: Pentasyllabic ancient-style verse, 20 lines.

Occasion: A mid-autumn night poem written in a playful mode (戲拈, “playfully picked up”). The source notes that a Han dynasty bronze ruler was made on the 15th day of the 8th month — Mid-Autumn Day — in the Jianchu era (76–84 CE), establishing the historical anchor for the moon’s observation.

Original text:

二千年前月。共證此銅尺。依依嵩陽夢。靑眼萬里客。問不秋月筵。何如臘雪夕。烟雲尋過境。雪泥覓舊跡。螳轍自不量。竹柯本無易。拈起文字祥。一室生虛白。山海叩崇深。埃壒覺偪窄。天上鑄顔爐。剛柔各自適。須君剔舊酸。列仙在山澤。

Translation: Cinemawords

The moon of two thousand years ago — together we verify this bronze ruler. Lingering like the Songyuan dream; blue eyes of a guest from ten thousand li. Do not ask about the autumn moon banquet — how does it compare to a winter snow evening? Smoke and clouds seeking out the passed scenery; snow and mud tracing old footprints. The mantis in the wheel-rut cannot gauge itself; the bamboo branch is fundamentally unchanged. Taking up the auspicious written words — one room becomes filled with empty white. Mountains and seas — knocking at their lofty depths; dust and grime feels squeezed and narrow. Heaven’s furnace casts the shapes of faces above; the rigid and the supple each find their fit. You must scrape away what has gone sour before — the immortals are in the mountain marshes.

Reading notes:

The bronze ruler (銅尺) was made on Mid-Autumn Day in the Jianchu era of the Han dynasty — a detail that allows Kim to place the present moon in a two-thousand-year continuum. This is a characteristic move: the occasion is immediate and seasonal, but the perspective is historical.

Songyuan (嵩陽) is a famous Daoist mountain site at Songshan, traditionally associated with immortals and with elevated, otherworldly vision. The “guest from ten thousand li” invokes the Beijing connection that runs through Part 1 — a friend seen across great distance, through the medium of the moon.

The mantis in the wheel-rut (螳轍) comes from a saying attributed to the Zhuangzi tradition: a mantis that raises its forelegs against an approaching cart wheel, not understanding its own smallness in relation to the force bearing down on it. Kim uses it here as a figure for anyone who does not understand their own limits — a mild self-correction embedded in a playful poem.

The closing instruction — “scrape away what has gone sour before the immortals can appear” — gives the poem’s playfulness a slight edge: the point of the Mid-Autumn gathering is not celebration for its own sake but the clearing-out of stale thought.

北園初夏 (North Garden, Early Summer)

Period: Exact date unestablished; pre-exile period (before 1840).

Form: Pentasyllabic ancient-style verse, 10 lines.

Occasion: A seasonal poem written in the north garden during the early days of summer.

Original text:

天氣正熟梅。陰晴摠不眞。近峯一圭出。雨雲還往頻。綠陰合巾裾。啼鶯如可親。玟瑰雜刺桐。紅白表餘春。來結靑霞侶。自是芳杜身。

Translation: Cinemawords

The weather is just ripening the plums; cloud and sun — neither quite real. The near peak lifts one corner into view; rain clouds come and go repeatedly. Green shade closes over headgear and robes; the crying oriole feels close enough to befriend. Roses mingled with silk-cotton trees — red and white displaying the remnant spring. I come to tie myself to blue-mist companions — naturally I am of the fragrant-herb kind.

Reading notes:

A short lyric of sensory suspension. The weather in early summer — the Chinese meiyu (梅雨), plum-rain season — is indeterminate: neither fully cloudy nor fully clear, neither spring nor summer, the plums not quite ripe. Kim renders this in-between quality precisely: “cloud and sun — neither quite real,” the peak visible only in one corner, rain clouds arriving and departing without resolution.

The final line’s “fragrant herb kind” (芳杜身) draws on Qu Yuan’s Li Sao, in which the poet-exile binds himself to fragrant plants — orchids, angelica, du herbs — as companions in solitude and as marks of cultivated virtue. Kim positions his arrival in the garden not as recreation but as joining a community of those who, like the aromatic plants, persist through seasonal change without accommodation.

春日北崦人家偃松下。同人小集。 (Spring Day: A Small Gathering at a North Hillside House Beneath a Prostrate Pine)

Period: Exact date unestablished; pre-exile period (before 1840).

Form: Pentasyllabic ancient-style verse, 12 lines.

Occasion: A small gathering of literary friends beneath a prostrate pine tree at a house on the north hillside in spring.

Original text:

坡公偃蓋卷。無乃此曾臨。如入田盤山。何有獅子林。苓芝應下結。雲嵐時上侵。幽籟如聞潮。良材可中琴。千翠疊萬綠。紅紫漫淺深。勖之歲寒意。不啻百朋金。

Translation: Cinemawords

Su Dongpo’s “Prostrate Canopy” scroll — did he not once come to a place just like this? It is like entering Tianpan Mountain — what need is there for the Lion Grove? Lingzhi mushrooms should form below; cloud-haze drifts up from time to time. Quiet sounds like the sound of a tide; fine timber that could center a zither. A thousand greens layered over ten thousand greens; reds and purples spilling in shallow and deep. To be encouraged by the cold-season spirit — it is worth more than a hundred strings of gold.

Reading notes:

Su Dongpo wrote a famous piece about a prostrate pine (yanggai / 偃蓋) whose canopy spreads horizontally like an umbrella — Kim identifies the tree at this gathering with that literary precedent, placing the gathering immediately in the tradition of the Song master’s outdoor reveries.

Tianpan Mountain (田盤山) in Hebei province was famous for ancient pines with Daoist associations. The Lion Grove (獅子林) was a celebrated Suzhou garden known for its elaborate stone rockwork — an artificial aesthetic spectacle. Kim’s comparative judgment is pointed: this natural prostrate pine surpasses the famous garden, just as Su Dongpo’s informal observations surpass planned aesthetics.

The poem closes with the Confucian image from the Analects — “only in winter’s cold do we know the pine and cypress do not wither” (歲寒然後知松柏之後彫) — applied to the gathering’s literary quality: this kind of friendship, tested and persistent, is worth more than gold.

寄呈小華。用昌黎贈無本韻。 (Sent to Sohua, Using Han Yu’s Rhyme from “Gift to Wuben”)

Period: Exact date unestablished; pre-exile period (before 1840).

Form: Heptasyllabic ancient-style verse in the rhyme scheme of Han Yu’s “Wuben” poem, 32 lines.

Occasion: A long literary-critical poem sent to an unidentified friend or student called Sohua (小華 / 소화). The poem uses the rhyme scheme of Han Yu’s (昌黎 / Changli, 768–824) famous poem “Gift to Wuben” (贈無本), addressed to the poet-monk Jia Dao — a poem celebrated for its emphasis on relentless self-criticism and poetic discipline. On first appearance: Han Yu (韓愈), Tang dynasty prose master and poet; the “Wuben” poem is a benchmark of literary self-refinement.

Original text:

小華雄於詩。執筆日膽膽。屹然樹堅城。環攻果孰敢。杜韓大將旗。往往一手攬。深入藐阻隘。窮追到坎窞。古人不可見。冥漠首應頷。汩沒自然伸。聲名那須噉。摛藻風謖謖。興詞雲黮黮。剔摧見筋髓。噓吸變舒慘。義博約以精。氣盛斂於澹。斑駮古錦繡。芬馥秋菡萏。玄霜徂楓桕。白露被葭菼。庶幾儒者言。使人可興感。我讀未終卷。嗜之若昌歜。始悟事浮豔。秪同落花糝。盛名無輕酬。涉境貴勞坎。虛氣不刊落。不如廢鉛槧。實腹無精英。流涎徒頷顑。鞭心自刻礪。痛繩務苛憯。三舍今且避。孤軍終思撼。此詩聊致師。强詞不足覽。

Translation: Cinemawords

Sohua — heroic in poetry; taking up the brush, bold and fearless day after day. Standing firm, having built a solid fortress — who would dare encircle and attack? Du Fu and Han Yu’s great commander-flags — often seized with a single hand. Entering deep, scorning obstacles and narrow passes; pursuing to the limit into pits and crevices. The ancients cannot be seen — in the dark distance, heads should nod. Emerging naturally from obscurity — why must reputation be chewed and consumed? Spreading embellishment — wind rushing through pines; rising words — clouds piling thick and dark. Stripping away to find sinews and marrow; breathing in and out, shifting between the expansive and sorrowful. Meaning: broad, condensed to precision; force: strong, gathered into plainness. Variegated like ancient brocade; fragrant as autumn lotus. Dark frost crossing maple and tallow trees; white dew covering reeds and rushes. Approaching the speech of the Confucian gentleman — making people capable of being moved to feeling. I had not finished reading the volume when I was already addicted — like bittersweet tubers. I began to understand: pursuing florid elegance is only like fallen blossoms scattered on cooked rice. A great name must not be lightly repaid; passing through experience, the labor of difficulty is what counts. Empty air that does not fall away — better to discard the bronze stylus and tablet entirely. A full belly with no essence or spirit — saliva flows but the jaw merely hangs. Whip the heart with self-sharpening; painful rope — insist on the harsh and bitter. Three retreats — for now, withdraw; the lone army still thinks of the assault. This poem is offered somewhat as tribute to a teacher — forced words, not worth the reading.

Reading notes:

The choice of Han Yu’s “Wuben” rhyme scheme is a precise signal. Han Yu’s original was written for the monk-poet Jia Dao (賈島, 779–843), who agonized over single words in his poems for so long that he became a byword for poetic self-torture. Kim is positioning Sohua in that tradition of relentless refinement — and then positioning himself as the lesser figure who defers to Sohua’s achievement.

The critical vocabulary Kim employs is precise: “stripping away to find sinews and marrow” (剔摧見筋髓) is the ideal of poetry that removes everything inessential; “meaning broad, condensed to precision; force strong, gathered into plainness” (義博約以精。氣盛斂於澹) describes the paradox of the best classical verse — enormous capacity compressed into apparent simplicity.

The “bittersweet tubers” (昌歜) allusion is from Su Dongpo, who used this plant relish as a metaphor for acquired taste — something that seems unappealing at first but becomes addictive to the cultivated palate. Kim says Sohua’s poetry is exactly that: it does not announce its quality immediately.

The poem’s final movement turns self-critical with unusual sharpness. “Empty air that does not fall away — better to discard the stylus” and “full belly with no spirit — saliva flows but the jaw merely hangs” are directed at a type of poetry — or perhaps at Kim’s own tendencies — that has the outer marks of scholarship without inner substance. The “lone army still thinking of the assault” in the penultimate couplet is Kim positioning himself as still engaged in the literary battle even while yielding pride of place.

燈夕聯句 (Lantern Evening Linked Verse)

Period: Exact date unestablished; pre-exile period (before 1840).

Form: Linked verse (Yeongu / 聯句) in pentasyllabic couplets, composed collectively. The poem cycles through six contributors; each couplet is attributed.

Occasion: A lantern festival poem composed collectively on the evening of the Lantern Festival (燈夕 / Deongseok — typically the full moon of the first lunar month). Contributors: Ihyeong (而亨), Sihyeon (時顯), Haji (和之), Huigyeong (羲卿), Gyeongseon (景先), and Kim Jeong-hui himself (元春 / Wonchun). The source notes that below the preserved couplets, rhyme-syllables remain but the corresponding lines are lost.

Original text:

佛辰徵日卯。恒曜斂煜霅。[而亨] 八關麗風襲。九華漢制合。[時顯] 棚彩先菖飮。樹火殿靑踏。[和之] 莊嚴現十界。供養彌千臘。[羲卿] 炬訝唐城連。幟驚趙壁匝。[景先] 齊趁令匪頒。踵升等不擸。[元春] 同明或旅進。迭前類賓答。[亨] 豎幢震婆娑。累鍾啞鐺鎝。[顯] 玉虹騰萬井。金釭出千閤。[和] 翠箰交巑岏。珠實競複沓。[羲] 心心証金斷。頭頭筮簪盍。[先] 竦出非緣脊。低視應從塌。[春] 機栝巧麟楦。畵采列兕韐。[亨] 驚才戶珠握。哂癡火宅匼。[顯] 晣無卜晝夜。繁難計廿卅。[和] 殘燧耻遠墩。群鐸較高塔。[羲] 祥輝散千華。普光由百衲。[先] 爭奇轉時閃。不厭密處闒。[春] ○此下有韻無詩。

Translation: Cinemawords

[Ihyeong] The Buddha’s birthday marks the day: the mao hour; the constant radiance gathers, sparkling and brilliant. [Sihyeon] The Eight Precepts Festival’s lovely wind arrives; the Nine Flowers follow the Han dynasty’s form. [Haji] Colored pavilions — first drink the sweet flag wine; lantern trees — the palace courtyard trodden in green. [Huigyeong] Solemnity reveals the ten realms; offerings extend through a thousand lamplit festivals. [Gyeongseon] Torches extend in surprise — along the Tang city’s line; banners astonish — the Zhao wall encircled all around. [Kim] Together hurrying at the hour before the order is proclaimed; rising on tiptoe, equal to those not yet pulled up. [Ihyeong] Sharing the light, some travel forward together; taking turns in front, like guests and hosts alternating. [Sihyeon] Raising the standard shakes the swaying world; the massed bells murmur and clang. [Haji] Jade rainbows soar over ten thousand wells; gold lamps emerge from a thousand chambers. [Huigyeong] Emerald pipes cross the craggy peaks; pearl-like fruits compete in overlapping layers. [Gyeongseon] Mind by mind, proving the golden cut; head by head, divining the pin and clasp. [Kim] Standing out — not because of a crooked spine; looking low — rightly following the fallen. [Ihyeong] Mechanism and latch: the clever unicorn’s last form; painted colors: the arranged horn-tipped bow case set out. [Sihyeon] Astonishing talent — a pearl gripped at the doorway; smiling at foolishness — the fire-house crammed full. [Haji] Brightening without divining day or night; complicated — hard to count off twenty or thirty. [Huigyeong] Remaining torches ashamed before distant watchtowers; massed bells competing with lofty pagodas. [Gyeongseon] Auspicious brilliance scattering in a thousand flowers; pervasive light flowing from a hundred monks’ robes. [Kim] Competing in marvel, turning in an instant — never tiring of the densely packed narrow spaces. [Below this point, rhyme-syllables remain but the corresponding lines are lost.]

Reading notes:

The linked-verse form (lianju / 聯句) required each contributor to continue the poem’s rhyme scheme and semantic momentum while also redirecting it. This poem is unusual in the Wandang Jeonjip as a social document: it names six participants and preserves their individual contributions, offering a rare glimpse into the texture of Kim’s literary circle.

The poem’s subject — the Lantern Festival — is handled through accumulating images of light, spectacle, and religious ceremony: Eight Precepts observances, the Nine Flowers lantern display, the sound of bells, banners and torches, jade rainbows and gold lamps. The imagery moves from the devotional to the architectural and back again, each contributor adding a facet.

Kim’s own couplets (Wonchun / 元春) are notably understated within the collective display. His second contribution — “standing out not because of a crooked spine; looking low, rightly following the fallen” — introduces a moral dimension that cuts against the surrounding magnificence: the truly distinguished person is not propped up by the spectacle but by inner integrity. His final couplet — “competing in marvel, turning in an instant; never tiring of the densely packed narrow spaces” — closes his participation with something almost observational: watching the crowd press and flash.

送心湖丈人遊關西 (Farewell to Elder Simho Traveling to Gwanseo)

Period: Exact date unestablished; pre-exile period (before 1840).

Form: Pentasyllabic ancient-style verse, 10 lines.

Occasion: A farewell poem for someone called Simho (心湖 / 심호), addressed respectfully as janguin (丈人 / elder), who is traveling to Gwanseo — the region west of the Cheollyeong Pass, roughly the northwestern provinces of the Korean peninsula.

Original text:

謝傅傷情日。江郞作賦年。梅花淡如夢。舊雨空悵然。遙憶秦樓月。簫聲咽海天。君去卽歡樂。吾輩還自憐。努力愛歲華。分寄薛濤箋。

Translation: Cinemawords

Like Xie An on a day of troubled feeling, like Jiang Yan in years of verse-making — plum blossoms, faint as a dream; old friends — empty melancholy lingers. From afar, remembering the moon at Qin Tower; flute sound choked against sea and sky. Your departure brings you joy — we who remain only feel self-pity. Work hard and treasure the beauty of the year; divide these sheets and send them across to me.

Reading notes:

Two classical figures frame the poem’s emotional tone. Xie An (謝安, 320–385) — called Xie Fu (謝傅) from his official title — was a Jin dynasty statesman celebrated for receiving news of a great military crisis while playing chess and maintaining perfect equanimity. “A day of troubled feeling” (傷情日) inverts the Xie An image: Kim admits the emotion that the famous composure is supposed to conceal.

Jiang Yan (江淹, 444–505), known as Jiang Lang (江郞), was famous for early literary brilliance and later sterility — the legend holds that a divine being appeared in a dream and retrieved his talent brush. “His years of verse-making” here invokes the Jiang Yan before the brush was taken — the peak of creative power that the farewell threatens to interrupt.

Xue Tao’s notepaper (薛濤箋): Xue Tao (768–831) was a Tang poet-courtesan who made distinctive small red paper sheets for her poems. “Divide these sheets and send them across” is the request that correspondence continue — the physical medium of the ink bond maintained across distance.

棲碧亭秋日 (Autumn Day at Seobyeok Pavilion)

Period: Exact date unestablished; pre-exile period (before 1840).

Form: Pentasyllabic ancient-style verse, 8 lines.

Occasion: A short seasonal lyric written at Seobyeok Pavilion (棲碧亭 / Seobyeokjeong — “Roosting-in-Green Pavilion”) in autumn.

Original text:

幽洞螺旋入。細泉潑乳紅。禽鳥似持世。晝陰石壇空。春來厭繁華。愛此秋玲瓏。人癯如枯木。前身應老楓。

Translation: Cinemawords

The secluded grotto spirals inward like a shell; thin springs splash — red like milk. Birds seem to govern the world here; midday shade — the stone altar empty. When spring comes I grow tired of extravagance; I love this autumn’s crystalline clarity. The person is gaunt as dried-out wood — in a former life, I must have been an old maple.

Reading notes:

The final couplet is the poem’s destination. Kim’s self-description — “gaunt as dried-out wood” — is not simply self-deprecating humor; it places him in a tradition of Buddhist-Daoist identification with aged natural things. The “old maple” (老楓) in the closing line suggests a belief in accumulated consciousness across lifetimes: the particular quality of Kim’s autumn-appreciation, his preference for the stripped and crystalline over the lush and full, has the character of something inherited from a previous existence as a tree that turns color before dying.

The contrast between spring (extravagance, too-much) and autumn (clarity, just-enough) is a recurrent axis in Kim’s seasonal preferences. The same sensibility that found excess in smooth calligraphy and valued the eroded stone finds the right season in autumn’s divestment.

重三日雨 (Rain on the Third Day of the Third Month)

Period: Exact date unestablished; pre-exile period (before 1840).

Form: Pentasyllabic ancient-style verse, 16 lines.

Occasion: The Third Day of the Third Month (重三 / Samjinnal / 三月三日) was traditionally the day associated with Wang Xizhi’s Lanting Xu gathering of 353 CE — the Curved Water banquet at which scholars floated wine cups on a winding stream and composed poems at each stop where cups paused. Kim had intended to hold a gathering in the same spirit, but rain scattered his friends and he drank alone.

Original text:

花心齊蓄銳。麗景千林積。平生曲水想。庶幾酬素昔。朝雨如俗士。雲禽遭鎩翮。閉戶慚笠屐。林邱山川隔。人生天地間。遂爲風雨役。賞春足他日。重三不可易。奈此獨命酌。朋素並離析。焚香當聽花。細烟縈爐栢。

Translation: Cinemawords

Flower hearts all eagerly sharpening; lovely scenes accumulated in a thousand trees. My lifelong thought of the Curved Water — perhaps today would repay the original intention. Morning rain — like a vulgar official; cloud birds — their wings clipped. Closing the door, ashamed without clogs and hat; forests and hills, mountains and rivers — blocked off. Human life between heaven and earth — thus becomes the slave of wind and rain. Viewing spring — there will be enough other days; the Third of the Third Month cannot be replaced. And so I drink alone by command — friends and companions have all scattered. Burning incense — I will listen to the flowers instead; thin smoke twists around the brazier-side cypress.

Reading notes:

The Curved Water gathering (曲水 / Qushui) is the central allusion: Wang Xizhi’s 353 CE assembly at the Lanting Pavilion, where scholars and monks floated wine cups on a winding stream and composed poems wherever the cups paused. Wang’s famous preface to the resulting collection — the Lanting Xu, in calligraphy that became the most celebrated brushwork in East Asian history — opens by describing the pleasant gathering and then pivoting abruptly to mortality and the brevity of joy. Kim’s failed gathering rhymes with that pivot: the occasion that was supposed to produce something like the Lanting is wrecked by rain before it begins.

“Morning rain — like a vulgar official” (朝雨如俗士) is a compressed joke: vulgar officials appear at unwanted moments and disrupt the things one actually values. The cloud birds with “wings clipped” (雲禽遭鎩翮) are birds that intended to fly and cannot — the image applies equally to Kim’s friends who could not come.

The resolution — burning incense and listening to flowers while thin smoke wraps the brazier-side cypress — is a private ceremony substituted for the communal gathering. The solitude is acknowledged without drama.

仿招隱體寄景言 (In the “Summoning the Recluse” Style, Sent to Gyeongon)

Period: Exact date unestablished; pre-exile period (before 1840).

Form: Pentasyllabic ancient-style verse, 16 lines.

Occasion: A poem in the Zhaoin (招隱, “Summoning the Recluse”) genre, addressed to Gyeongon (景言). This classical genre — established by Zuo Si (左思, 250–305 CE) — describes the austere life of the recluse both to celebrate it and to suggest that return to human society might not be unreasonable. Gyeongon is an unidentified recipient living in remote mountain seclusion.

Original text:

獨坐千峯裏。窅夐人烟絶。蒼蘚匝堂皇。白雲冒峭嶻。破竈虎夜嘯。朽梁蛇晝挈。枕流耳將聾。漱石齒更折。綺栢百花時。陰崖嵌幽雪。寒淥薄瘦骨。翻恐凍成結。且當休功令。冬心革夏熱。永懷彈琵琶。會看躍冶鐵。

Translation: Cinemawords

Sitting alone within a thousand peaks; distant, vast — human smoke entirely gone. Blue-green moss covers the great hall; white clouds press against the steep crags. A broken stove — tigers howl through the night; rotten beams — snakes hang suspended in daylight. Pillow on the current — ears growing deaf; rinse with stone — teeth breaking further. Patterned cypress in the hundred-flower season; shaded cliffs with hidden snow embedded. Cold clarity thins the gaunt bones — one fears they will freeze and harden. For now, rest from the edicts of official duty; let winter-heart renew summer’s heat. Eternally treasured: the plucking of a pipa; someday you will watch smelted iron leap.

Reading notes:

The Zhaoin genre catalogued the hardships of reclusion as a way of paying tribute to the recluse’s commitment while tactfully suggesting its limits: tigers at night, snakes by day, broken equipment, physical deterioration. Kim deploys these conventions with evident relish — the list of privations is almost comic in its accumulation.

“Pillow on the current, rinse with stone” (枕流漱石) alludes to a story from the Shishuo Xinyu: the Jin dynasty figure Sun Chu meant to say “pillow on the stone, rinse in the stream” but reversed the two by mistake. When corrected, he stubbornly insisted that “pillowing on the current” means one’s ears are always cleansed by running water, and “rinsing with stone” means one’s teeth are always sharpened. The allusion is used here both for its sense of eccentric self-justification (the recluse finds nobility in what looks like discomfort) and as a subtle joke at the recluse’s expense.

The poem’s final couplet pivots from hardship to promise: “the pipa eternally treasured… watch smelted iron leap.” The pipa (a four-stringed lute) held in permanent readiness suggests an artistic capacity not yet deployed; smelted iron leaping from the furnace suggests the transformation that sustained endurance eventually produces.

到山寺。拈韋蘇州韻。 (Arriving at a Mountain Temple, Picking Up the Rhyme of Wei Yingwu)

Period: Exact date unestablished; pre-exile period (before 1840).

Form: Pentasyllabic ancient-style verse, 8 lines.

Occasion: Kim visits an unnamed mountain temple and writes in the rhyme-scheme of Wei Yingwu (韋應物, 737–792), the Tang poet known by the title Suzhou (蘇州 / Wei Suzhou) from his term as prefect of Suzhou. Wei Yingwu was celebrated for quiet, Buddhist-inflected poems about temples and rivers.

Original text:

方外多宿緣。此山非生客。慧光還明月。圓性盡老石。定中一樓香。共作空林夕。在在元實境。過去非陳跡。

Translation: Cinemawords

Outside the world, many old connections dwell; this mountain is no stranger to me. Wisdom-light returns with the bright moon; rounded nature exhausted into old stone. In meditative stillness: one tower’s incense; together making the evening of the empty forest. Everywhere is essentially the real realm; the past is not a stale trace.

Reading notes:

The choice of Wei Yingwu’s rhyme is itself a statement of aesthetic allegiance. Wei Yingwu’s temple poems typically move from precise observation of the natural scene into Buddhist philosophical observation — the transition is smooth, as though the natural and the philosophical are simply two ways of describing the same perception. Kim’s poem follows this model.

“Wisdom-light returns with the bright moon” (慧光還明月): the moon becomes a figure for the Buddha’s enlightened awareness — not a symbol imposed from outside but a natural equivalence. Similarly, “rounded nature exhausted into old stone” (圓性盡老石) identifies the stone’s quality — its roundedness, its persistence — with the dharmakaya, the body of Buddha-nature that pervades all things.

The final couplet is philosophically dense. “Everywhere is essentially the real realm” (在在元實境) draws on the non-dualist principle that no particular location is more or less “real” than any other — the mountain temple is not a retreat from the real world into a special realm; it simply makes visible what the real world always already is. “The past is not a stale trace” (過去非陳跡) inverts the conventional temple-poem move of lamenting historical residue: what appears to be historical remainder is present reality.

與黃山，東籬諸公。賞瀑東嶺。 (Enjoying the Waterfall on the East Ridge with Hwangsan, Dongni, and Others)

Period: Exact date unestablished; pre-exile period (before 1840).

Form: Pentasyllabic ancient-style verse, 16 lines. One character is missing in the source (缺), reproduced here with the gap preserved.

Occasion: A group excursion with literary friends Hwangsan (黃山) and Dongni (東籬) — pen names of unidentified companions — to view a waterfall on the east ridge of a mountain after summer rain.

Original text:

夏山新霽雨。無溪不淸漪。百疊翡翠堆。峰顚與澗涯。空山寂人心。之子竟誰思。石頑猶堪語。水駛不可追。幽松若高士。白雲媚奇姿。金膏充我腸。水碧染我眉。僊路永隔世。誰敎緣細絲。我欲斷塵 缺。無懽而無悲。

Translation: Cinemawords

The summer mountain freshly cleared after rain; every stream shimming with clear ripples. A hundred layers of kingfisher-green piled up; peak tops and ravine edges. The empty mountain stills the human heart; this person — who in the end is being thought of? Stubborn stone is still worth speaking to; rushing water cannot be pursued. Secluded pines like men of high character; white clouds charming with an unusual posture. Golden elixir fills my intestines; water-blue dyes my eyebrows. The immortal path is permanently cut from the world — who taught such a delicate thread of connection? I wish to sever the mundane [gap in source] — no joy, and no sorrow.

Reading notes:

The poem moves from sensory abundance — the post-rain clarity, kingfisher-green foliage, waterfalls — toward a state beyond sensation. “Stubborn stone is still worth speaking to; rushing water cannot be pursued” sets up a contrast between the permanent (stone, which stays and receives language) and the transient (water, which moves too fast to follow). The stone becomes the companion; the water is released.

“Golden elixir fills my intestines; water-blue dyes my eyebrows” (金膏充我腸。水碧染我眉): the mountain’s richness enters the body and transforms it — Daoist imagery of the landscape becoming internal nourishment, the landscape’s colors literally dying the body’s surfaces.

The missing character in line 15 (我欲斷塵 缺) is preserved faithfully from the source. The line reads: “I wish to sever the mundane —” and then breaks off. Whatever noun or verb completed the wish has been lost. The gap opens an additional silence in a poem already moving toward silence.

水落山寺 (Suraksan Temple)

Period: Exact date unestablished; pre-exile period (before 1840).

Form: Pentasyllabic ancient-style verse, 10 lines.

Occasion: A poem written at one of the temple complexes of Suraksan (水落山), a mountain in the northeastern area of present-day Seoul.

Original text:

我見日與月。光景覺常新。萬象各自在。刹刹及塵塵。誰知玄廓處。此雪同此人。虛籟錯爲雨。幻華不成春。手中百億寶。曾非乞之鄰。

Translation: Cinemawords

I see the sun and moon — light and shadow feel always fresh. The ten thousand phenomena each exist as they are; from moment to moment, mote by mote. Who knows that in the wide-open mystery: this snow and this person are the same. Empty sound mistaken for rain; illusory flowers that will not make spring. A hundred billion treasures in the hand — never once obtained by begging from a neighbor.

Reading notes:

A brief, compressed meditation in the Zen mode. “From moment to moment, mote by mote” (刹刹及塵塵) uses two Buddhist units of absolute particularity — the ksana (剎那, the smallest unit of time) and the dust-mote (塵, the smallest unit of matter) — to say that the ten thousand phenomena are each individually complete and individually present, not subsumed into categories or generalizations.

“This snow and this person are the same” (此雪同此人): the boundary between the observing consciousness and the observed world dissolves. This is not metaphor but non-dualist assertion: in the mountain’s cold clarity, the distinction becomes unintelligible.

The final couplet’s “hundred billion treasures” alludes to the Zen teaching that every person already possesses the Buddha-nature (here called “treasures in the hand”) without needing to acquire it from outside. The negation of “begging from a neighbor” completes the point: these are not gifts, not earned goods, not borrowed insights — they are constitutive.

送黃庭李斗臣出宰河陽 (Farewell to Yi Duchin of Hwangjeong, Taking Charge of Hayang District)

Period: Exact date unestablished; pre-exile period (before 1840).

Form: Pentasyllabic ancient-style verse, 22 lines.

Occasion: A farewell poem for Yi Duchin (李斗臣), departing to serve as district magistrate of Hayang (河陽) in Gyeongsang province. Kim, whose primary scholarly passion was epigraphy, uses the occasion to request a stele rubbing.

Original text:

我本癖金石。君自善歌詩。花城古梨旨。舊有廢縣碑。遠溯貢銀事。並徵不花時。升廢各有定。歷歷崔瀣詞。石墨擅嶺南。多是寺塔遺。此碑獨不然。實事尙可追。苔花五百年。無人剝蛟螭。爲我窮搜索。莫惜費氈椎。方今民事殷。田政且亟其。而此汗漫事。似若無暇爲。片石承惠澤。黎黔可類推。我添賀碑圖。君又一歌之。

Translation: Cinemawords

I am by nature obsessed with metal and stone; you yourself excel at singing and poetry. Hwaseong — the old Nariji district: there used to be a stele of an abolished county there. Tracing far back: the matter of tribute silver, alongside the Buhwa-era levies. Rises and falls each have their fixed term — the records in Choe Hae’s verses are clear. Stone rubbings have long excelled in the Yeongnam region — mostly what remains from temple pagodas. This stele alone is different: actual events can still be traced there. Moss-flowers of five hundred years — no one has scraped away the dragon-serpent carvings. Please search exhaustively on my behalf — do not begrudge the expense of felt and mallet. Right now the people’s affairs are dense — the land-tax policies are urgent. And this rambling matter seems as if there is no time for it. One piece of stone receiving the grace of benevolent governance — the common people can be understood by the same principle. I will add a sketch of the stele’s imagery; you, too, will compose one more poem about it.

Reading notes:

Kim’s request is specific and technically detailed: the stele at Nariji (梨旨 / 이지) in Hayang is not an ordinary temple pagoda inscription but a record of actual administrative events — specifically the Goryeo-era tribute silver system and the Buhwa (不花) period. Kim cites Choe Hae (崔瀣, a Goryeo dynasty official) as having left records that allow the historical events to be verified.

The rubbing method Kim specifies — felt and mallet (氈椎 / 전추) — was the standard technique for making stone rubbings: a damp sheet of paper applied over the carved surface, then tapped with a padded mallet to bring out the relief. Kim knows the technique exactly.

The final pivot — “one piece of stone receiving the grace of benevolent governance; the common people can be understood by the same principle” — converts the epigraphic request into a political argument: caring for a stone monument is continuous with caring for people, because both involve attending to what time has threatened to erase. Kim sends Yi off with a moral framework for his new post.

送觀白都護之任谷山 (Farewell to General Gwanbaek Taking Post at Goksan)

Period: Exact date unestablished; pre-exile period (before 1840).

Form: Pentasyllabic ancient-style verse, 20 lines.

Occasion: A farewell poem for Gwanbaek (觀白), a military commander (都護 / Doho / Protector-General) taking up his post at Goksan (谷山), in present-day North Hwanghae province. The poem is dense with the historical geography of the region.

Original text:

十谷城頭雲。末訖灘上月。鬱鬱衣冠地。名府雄西臬。百靈護龍淵。天章何皇矞。鹿乘忽無處。秘跡留古窟。車馬四道交。阸要此門闕。東隙老人岾。石棧撑臬兀。加藤昔北寇。蝶陳恣隳突。於古亦名浿。能水流汩汩。是爲溫祚域。豬淺枉遼越。君今此中去。方輿煩補缺.

Translation: Cinemawords

Cloud above Sipgok Fortress; moon over the final reach of Malgeulan Rapids. Dense and flourishing — a land of the robed and hatted; a famous prefecture, commanding the western frontier. A hundred spirits protect Dragon Abyss; heaven’s writing — so splendidly ornate. The deer-riding immortal — suddenly nowhere to be found; hidden traces remain in ancient caves. Carts and horses cross at the four-roads junction; this gatehouse commands the strategic bottleneck. To the east: Old Man Pass, a narrow gap; stone-plank roads prop up the jagged heights. Kato — that northern invader of long ago; butterfly formations rampaged freely. In antiquity it was also called the Pae River; the Neung River flows gurgling along. This is the domain of King Onjo; Jeoseon — how vain the attempt to surpass Liaodong. You go now into this territory — the geographical records need supplementing.

Reading notes:

Goksan’s historical density earns the poem’s scholarly energy. Kim mentions: the ancient fortress; the deity protecting Dragon Abyss; the immortal-associated caves; the strategic military importance of the passes (including Noin Pass, the “Old Man Pass”); the Japanese general Kato Kiyomasa’s invasion during the Imjin War (1592–1598, here identified by surname 加藤); the ancient name for the local river (Pae / 浿); and the founding of Baekje by King Onjo (溫祚, the legendary first Baekje king). The final injunction — “the geographical records need supplementing” — repeats the formula from poem 31, making Kim’s departing-official poems a consistent genre: he sends his friends off as unwitting research assistants.

“Jeoseon — how vain the attempt to surpass Liaodong” (豬淺枉遼越): an allusion to the ancient state of Gojoseon (古朝鮮), whose founders supposedly came from the Liaodong peninsula and settled at what is now called Goksan. Kim collapses ancient and recent history into a single observation about this place’s layered significance.

遼野 (Liao Plains)

Period: Written during a journey to northern China, likely associated with Kim’s 1809 diplomatic mission or a related official trip; pre-exile period (before 1840).

Form: Pentasyllabic ancient-style verse, 26 lines. The source includes a note from Li Muzhuang (李墨莊): “the great atmosphere rolls and turns.”

Occasion: Kim is traveling across the vast Manchurian/Liaodong plains — a landscape of extreme flatness extending beyond any visible horizon. The experience produces a philosophical meditation on the curvature of the earth.

Original text:

山到石嶺盡。萬里橫襟前。天地空虛處。儘在此中間。水凹與山凸。平掃疣贅縣。乾端入何處。地體信覺圓。視極以爲際。到際又茫然。兩曜匪海出。皆從大陸緣。白塔出菌頭。何以雄塞邊。遊雲弄狡獪。時自幻遠山。千秋大哭塲。戲喩仍妙詮。譬之初生兒。出世而啼先。十方恒沙佛。無量百億千。如將此地量。還復着一連。依舊從線路。人行殊可憐。

Translation: Cinemawords

Mountains end at the stone ridge; ten thousand li spread across the front of my chest. The place where heaven and earth are empty — it is all here, in between. Water hollows and mountain bumps — swept flat, knobs and protrusions erased. Where does the sky’s edge end? The body of the earth — I now understand it to be round. Looking to the far limit, I take it as the horizon; arriving at the horizon: again, vast emptiness. The sun and moon do not rise from the sea — they both come from the edge of the great continent. The white pagoda emerges like a mushroom cap — what earns it the right to dominate the border frontier? Roaming clouds play their trickery; sometimes they conjure the illusion of distant mountains. For a thousand autumns this has been the place of weeping aloud — the metaphor is playful but the explanation is apt: compare it to a newborn infant — entering the world, crying first. The Buddhas of the ten directions, like grains of river sand — immeasurable, a hundred billion thousand. If you were to measure this land by that count — it would still require one more row added. Following the same thread of road as before — human beings walking it: truly pitiable. [Li Muzhuang noted: “The great atmosphere rolls and turns.”]

Reading notes:

One of the most philosophically ambitious poems in the collection. The Liao Plains produce in Kim a specifically geographical insight: the flat horizon that seems to extend infinitely is actually the curve of the earth. “The body of the earth — I now understand it to be round” (地體信覺圓) is a striking line to find in a nineteenth-century Korean poem. Kim is not making a learned citation; he is reporting perceptual experience — the plains are so vast and flat that the horizon’s behavior reveals the earth’s curvature directly to the observing eye.

The observation about the sun and moon — “they do not rise from the sea; they come from the edge of the great continent” (兩曜匪海出。皆從大陸緣) — corrects an assumption embedded in centuries of East Asian poetry. Countless poems describe the sun and moon rising from or setting into the sea. Kim, standing on the continental interior, sees that the celestial bodies rise from the edge of the great landmass itself, not from the ocean. This is both geographically precise and mildly subversive of the poetic tradition he has inherited.

The comparison of the plains to a “place of weeping aloud” (大哭塲) and then to a newborn infant crying upon entering the world applies Buddhist scale to the landscape: even this overwhelming vastness is, from the perspective of the Buddha-fields (ten directions, innumerable grains of sand), small enough to “require one more row.” The final image — human beings following their thread-thin road across the immensity — is genuinely moving in its proportional honesty.

澄海樓 (Jinghai Tower)

Period: Written during a journey to northern China, likely associated with Kim’s 1809 diplomatic mission; pre-exile period (before 1840). The source notes: “This poem was copied by Liu Sanshan and circulated in the Kanzhi Pavilion collection; Liu has a harmonizing poem.”

Form: Pentasyllabic ancient-style verse, 22 lines.

Occasion: A poem written at Jinghai Tower (澄海樓), located at Shanhaiguan (山海關) — the famous pass at the eastern end of the Great Wall where the wall meets the sea on the Bohai coast. This is one of the most historically charged landscapes in East Asia.

Original text:

鰲背立城郭。蜃口起窓欞。此海是大濠。秦城走峻曾。碣石若有無。雲日下亭亭。天子留詩墨。龍氣不敢腥。却憐吾西海。來此爲東溟。天地無南北。圭景遁眞形。舊觀落照處。豈意月復升。日月吾先得。此地沾餘零。海窮卽家鄕。褰裳如可憑。曜靈白人頭。旋轉海所承。我願平海水。無烏飛兎興。

Translation: Cinemawords

City walls stand on a giant sea-turtle’s back; clam-mouth shapes rise in the window lattice. This sea is the great moat; the Qin walls run past towering cliffs. Jiezhishi — visible or not? Cloud and sun descend, poised and still. The Son of Heaven left his poetry and calligraphy here; dragon-breath dare not grow fishy. Yet how I pity my own Western Sea — arriving here as the Eastern Ocean. Heaven and earth have no south or north; the gnomon’s shadow hides its true form. The old view of where the setting sun drops — who would have thought the moon would rise again there? Sun and moon — I receive them first; this land catches the remaining drops. When the sea ends, that is home — lifting my robes as if I could step out onto it. The bright spirit whitens men’s heads; the sea receives and turns in revolution. I wish the sea-water were level — with no rising crow, no bounding hare.

Reading notes:

Shanhaiguan is where the Great Wall meets the Bohai Sea — historically the boundary between the Chinese heartland and the outer territories to the north and east. Jinghai Tower sits at this junction. The poem’s opening mythological image — city walls on a sea-turtle’s back — positions the fortress as cosmological structure, not mere military engineering.

Jiezhishi (碣石): a famous coastal rock formation associated with Cao Cao’s (曹操) poem “Contemplating the Sea” (觀滄海, 207 CE), written from this same coastline — one of the oldest landscape poems in Chinese literature. Kim looks for it through the haze: “visible or not?” The uncertainty itself is precise: the famous landmark is there, but the weather makes it present-absent.

“Sun and moon — I receive them first; this land catches the remaining drops” (日月吾先得。此地沾餘零): Korea lies to the east of Shanhaiguan; therefore the sunrise reaches Korea before it reaches the Chinese mainland. Kim’s observation is simultaneously geographical, cosmic, and politically pointed: in the ordering of celestial reception, Korea has priority. The claim is made lightly — “the remaining drops” that fall on China are not nothing — but the reversal of the conventional cultural hierarchy is legible.

The wish that the sea be “level” (平海水) — “with no rising crow, no bounding hare” — draws on the mythological figures of the sun (the three-legged crow) and moon (the jade hare that pounds medicine) to express a wish for a world without the relentless passage of time they embody. It is as close to explicit elegy as this poem comes.

登角山絶頂。東觀滄海。北俯蒙古界。歸題寺壁。 (Climbing to the Summit of Gaksan; Looking East at the Blue Sea; Looking North Down at the Mongolian Border. Returned and Inscribed on the Temple Wall.)

Period: Written during a journey to northern China, likely 1809 or related trip; pre-exile period (before 1840).

Form: Pentasyllabic ancient-style verse, 30 lines.

Occasion: Kim climbs to the summit of Gaksan (角山), a mountain near Shanhaiguan from which both the Bohai Sea to the east and the Mongolian steppe to the north are visible. He then descends and inscribes the poem on a temple wall.

Original text:

車馬日蒙塵。千里歎消髀。飄然凌遠碧。大瀛平脚底。十年闤闠眼。滉漾身其殆。不有此山高。何由海相抵。雄關據兩間。厥名儘斯在。群峰作後勁。奔趨履北尾。天意截華夷。匪使險阻恃。蒙古山頭雲。倒退莫向邇。衣袂㥘化石。嵐翠從我起。來憩古寺中。許久斷人迹。墖面落重暈。佛頂塵數尺。拱鼠作頂禮。齧盡竺乾策。樵童疑肉芝。病客訝木客。泉眼嵌明珠。殘碑映空碧。昔聞一老師。於此示禪寂。勝朝殉節錄。千秋光爀爀。宜從此人補。闕漏良足惜。搔首向天風。落日翻崩墄。

Translation: Cinemawords

Carts and horses daily covered in dust; a thousand li — lamenting legs that waste away. Then lightly soaring over the distant blue — the great ocean level at my feet. Ten years of market-town eyes — the body swaying and nearly lost. Without this mountain’s height, by what means could one come to face the sea? The great fortress spans the two domains — its name is entirely present here. A host of peaks provides rear support; rushing and pressing along the northern foothills. Heaven’s intention: to divide the Chinese from the outer peoples — not to have reliance placed on difficult terrain. Mongolian mountain-peak clouds — retreating backward, do not approach. Garment-hems frozen stiff as stone; mountain mist-green rising from around me. Coming to rest in the ancient temple — for a long time, no human traces. Pagoda faces with heavy halos fallen; Buddha-crowns with inches of dust. Arching rats perform obeisances; they have gnawed through all the Indic texts. The woodcutter’s boy suspects immortal fungi; the ailing traveler is startled by tree spirits. Spring-eyes inlaid with bright pearls; ruined steles reflected in the empty blue. Long ago I heard of one old master who here demonstrated Chan stillness. Records of the martyrs of the former dynasty — through a thousand autumns their light blazes. It is fitting to supplement this account — the gaps and omissions are genuinely lamentable. Scratching my head toward the sky-wind — the setting sun flips over the collapsed stone steps.

Reading notes:

The poem opens by earning its view — ten years of dust-covered market-life, legs wasted by travel — before arriving at the summit epiphany: “the great ocean level at my feet.” The height makes legible what the lowlands concealed. This is one of Kim’s most explicit treatments of perspective as transformation.

“Heaven’s intention: to divide the Chinese from the outer peoples — not to have reliance placed on difficult terrain” (天意截華夷。匪使險阻恃): a geopolitical observation that the Great Wall and the mountains mark a civilizational boundary that is cosmologically intended, not merely topographic. The terrain expresses a cosmic ordering rather than causing it. The Mongolian clouds that “retreat and do not approach” follow this ordering.

The temple interior (lines 15–24) is among the most vividly rendered scenes in the installment: rats performing Buddhist obeisances, having gnawed through Sanskrit texts; villager boys mistaking the monks for mountain spirits; spring-fed rock eyes catching light like inlaid pearls; ruined steles catching the sky. Kim’s epigraphic attention is active even in the midst of philosophical reverie — and leads directly to his final concern: the “records of the martyrs of the former dynasty” (the Ming dynasty, defeated by the Qing). These martyrs’ records of loyalty unto death deserve to be preserved and supplemented. The epigraphic instinct — attending to what time threatens to erase — applies equally to stones and to historical memory.

The closing image — “scratching my head toward the sky-wind; the setting sun flips over the collapsed stone steps” — is one of the finest endings in the collection. The poet stands on the summit, puzzled and humbled, while the sun goes down over the rubble.

奉和犀園石瓊樓月夜賞瀑 (Harmonizing with Siwon’s Poem on Viewing the Waterfall by Moonlight at Seongnyou Tower)

Period: Exact date unestablished; pre-exile period (before 1840).

Form: Pentasyllabic ancient-style verse, 16 lines.

Occasion: Kim writes in response to a poem by Siwon (犀園), an unidentified literary friend, written at Seongnyou Tower (石瓊樓) while watching a waterfall by moonlight.

Original text:

君詩似泉籟。在山遂滿山。示我聽泉義。三昧此一斑。夜瀉元非與。晝激何曾還。晝喧而夜靜。二際若殊關。平生海濤音。亦仿小潺湲。酣放合精微。無厚入有間。自家逞機鋒。萬象收功圜。月光施無畏。老石俱點頑。

Translation: Cinemawords

Your poem is like a spring’s natural sound — once in the mountain, it fills the mountain entirely. You show me the meaning of listening to the spring — the three samadhis are present in this one glimpse. At night the waterfall pours — essentially not “given”; in daytime it surges — but has it ever returned? Daytime is clamorous, nighttime is still — the two sides seem separated by a different gate. Throughout my life, the sound of ocean waves also imitates a small running stream. Drunk release combined with precise delicacy; no thickness — entering into what has gaps. One’s own mechanism displays its cutting edge; the ten thousand phenomena gather in circular achievement. Moonlight bestows fearlessness; old stones are all made to nod in awakening.

Reading notes:

The installment closes with a meditation on the waterfall as teacher. Siwon’s poem is itself compared to spring-water sound — “once in the mountain, it fills the mountain” — meaning that good poetry adapts itself to whatever space it enters without forcing.

“No thickness — entering into what has gaps” (無厚入有間): an allusion to the Daoist “Skillful Butcher” (庖丁解牛) passage in Zhuangzi, in which Zhuangzi’s ideal cook describes his blade: “I use no thickness, entering what has spaces.” The blade slips between joints because it has been refined to near-nothingness. Applied to poetry, the image describes the refined work that enters precisely where it is needed without resistance.

The closing image — “moonlight bestows fearlessness; old stones are all made to nod in awakening” — is the gentlest ending in this installment and the most complete. Abhaya (fearlessness / 無畏) is a fundamental Buddhist quality, the posture of the bodhisattva who has released fear of the phenomenal world. Old stones nodding (點頑, literally “pointing out the stubborn”) suggests that even the most resistant and slow-changing things are moved by the combination of moonlight and clear water. The waterfall, the moon, the poem — all are working the same transformation.

Part 2 traces an arc from the social center — festival lanterns, gathered friends, seasonal occasions — to the edge of the known world and back. The three northern poems (33–35) form a unit of unusual philosophical ambition within the larger collection: Kim encountering the earth’s curvature with his own eyes, observing that Korea receives the sunrise before China does, standing at a summit where the sea and the steppe are simultaneously visible. These are poems that required a landscape large enough to show what smaller geographies conceal. Part 3 returns to the Seoul literary world, but the scale that the plains and the summit installed does not entirely leave.