Kim Jeong-hui: The Complete Poems, Volume 9, Part 7 — Autumn Meditations, Snow at Jimen, and the Volume’s Last Exile Poem

Poems 113–130 from the Wandang Jeonjip, Volume 9

This is Part 7 of the complete English translation of Kim Jeong-hui’s poems from the Wandang Jeonjip; it covers Volume 9, entries 113 through 130.

Every one of the 18 poem entries in this installment is heptasyllabic regulated verse (七言律詩). Where Parts 5 and 6 moved between pentasyllabic and heptasyllabic forms, Part 7 settles entirely into the longer line — the 56-character eight-line poem that dominated Parts 6’s back half. The formal consistency gives the installment a uniform register, but within that register the occasions scatter widely: playful imitation, autumn meditation, a tea request, a summer visit, two fragmentary Beijing relics (one incomplete, one explicitly collaged), mountain temple verse, road poems, a gathering at Seongnyou Tower, a Chan meditation at Suraksan, and a spring-poem exchange with Oh Nanseol.

The mood dominant across most of the group is autumnal and reflective, sometimes to the point of explicit elegy. The four poems imitating Seooyuja’s (書娛子) style (poem 113) are among the most melancholy in the volume — white hair three thousand zhang, a lifetime’s grinding dust, regret at being born too late for the great predecessors. The two autumn meditation poems (114) sustain this register. Even the lighter occasional pieces (116, 117, 128) carry aging as a recurring subject.

Two structural anomalies interrupt the group. Poem 118 is incomplete: the source notes 以下缺 (the following is missing) after six lines, leaving the poem suspended mid-argument. Poem 119 is explicitly a collage — assembled from the gifted-verse exchanges and conversations of Kim’s Beijing circle, its lines attributed to different scholars in embedded annotations, making it less a single poem than a reconstructed social document.

The installment closes with poem 130, a second exile poem appearing in Volume 9 among pre-exile works. Like poem 64 before it, it carries unmistakable markers — 遠謫 (distant exile) and an age calculation consistent with Kim’s early-to-mid 1840s — and its presence in Volume 9 is another sequencing anomaly in the source text. Volume 9 ends two parts later; these two out-of-time exile poems cast a shadow backward over the pre-exile world they interrupt.

次書娛子韻。戲效其體。四首 (Rhyming Book-Delight’s Verse, Playfully Imitating His Style — Four Poems)

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

Form: Heptasyllabic regulated verse (七言律詩), 8 lines each; four poems.

Occasion: Four poems rhyming the verse of “Seooyuja” (書娛子 / 서오자 — “Book-Delight Child,” on first appearance: an unidentified literary companion whose pen name means one who takes delight in books), playfully imitating his characteristic style.

Original text:

其一 南頭北尾繚相思。疎簟凉燈度夜遲。淸夢政須隣竹樹。幽情不惜贈瓊枝。怳疑明月前身是。留着高風後代知。好景怱怱輕莫擲。千金一刻半醺時。

其二 秋光澹澹引遙思。池屋蕭然坐獨遲。蠧落零痕千代跡。蟬過殘韻百年枝。凉天曬腹星辰列。煖斝澆胷竹石知。病葉狂花迷一世。長安風雨閉門時。

其三 山水淸音憶左思。佳緣晼晩采眞遲。蟾光在樹詩三疊。鶴氣橫天笛一枝。薄俗看來如旣灌。浮名多處貴希知。風流爾雅懷先輩。却恨吾生在後時。

其四 老來猶復少年思。匹馬樊川興不遲。百斗尋常酣月夜。千花頃刻舞風枝。竹林舊賞山河遠。錦瑟淸愁蝴蝶知。無限麻姑桑海感。可憐頭白面黃時。

Translation: Cinemawords

I

South-head north-tail — tangled longing; sparse bamboo mat, cool lamp — the night passes slowly. Clear dream just needs to be near bamboo trees; secluded feeling not grudging the gift of jade branches. Dazedly suspecting the bright moon is my former life; leaving the high wind for later generations to know. Beautiful scenes rush by — don’t lightly toss them away: a thousand gold pieces — one moment, half-drunk time.

II

Autumn light thin and pale drawing distant thoughts; pond house desolate, sitting alone — slowly. Bookworm-fallen zero-traces — thousand-generation tracks; cicada passed — residual sound, hundred-year branch. Cool sky, belly warming — stars arrayed; warm wine-vessel drenching the chest — bamboo and stone know. Sick leaves, wild flowers — confused for a lifetime: Chang’an wind and rain — door-closing time.

III

Mountain-water clear sounds — remembering Zuo Si; auspicious connection waning late — the true is slow to harvest. Toad-light in the trees — poetry three-layered; crane-energy spanning heaven — one flute branch. Shallow customs look like already poured-in [drunk]; floating fame many places — precious is rare knowing. Elegant refinement and Erya — cherishing predecessors: yet regretting my birth in the later era.

IV

Old age yet retaining youth’s thoughts; single horse at Fanchuan — the interest not slow. A hundred measures of wine — ordinary, drunk moon nights; a thousand flowers — in an instant dancing windswept branches. Bamboo grove old pleasure — mountains and rivers far; brocade zither, clear sadness — butterfly knows. Endless Magu mulberry-sea feelings — pitiful: white-haired and yellow-faced time.

Reading notes:

The four poems constitute a sustained meditation on aging, melancholy, and the gap between the present and the literary tradition one inhabits too late. The “playful imitation” announced in the title is genuine — these poems adopt a register more personally plaintive than most of Kim’s verse — but what they imitate also becomes what they express.

Zuo Si (左思, c. 250–305 CE) in poem III was a Jin dynasty poet famous for his “Summoning the Recluse” and “Chanting History” poems — a figure associated with literary ambition frustrated by social circumstance, which is the poem’s unspoken self-identification. Fanchuan (樊川) in poem IV is the area near Chang’an associated with the late Tang poet Du Mu (杜牧, 803–852), known for his elegance and melancholy. Kim riding “single horse” at Fanchuan places himself in Du Mu’s landscape.

The “brocade zither — clear sadness — butterfly knows” in poem IV compresses two of the most cited melancholy images in late Tang poetry: Li Shangyin’s brocade zither (錦瑟) with its opening question about fifty strings and flowering years, and Zhuangzi’s butterfly dream as a figure for the irretrievability of certain states of consciousness. Magu’s mulberry-sea (麻姑桑海) — the Daoist immortal who watched the eastern sea transform into mulberry fields three times — is the installment’s first invocation of deep cosmic time, setting the scale against which a single life’s aging is measured.

秋思 二首 (Autumn Thoughts — Two Poems)

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

Form: Heptasyllabic regulated verse (七言律詩), 8 lines each; two poems.

Occasion: Two autumn meditation poems without specific occasion.

Original text:

其一 昨夜星辰昨夜霜。南城秋思攪人長。天風人籟無非敎。墨所詩林必有方。豈意一鴻關歲暮。忽疑千葉赴期忙。白雲紅樹牽情感。客夢迢迢蟹稻鄕。

其二 依俙見境異烟霜。忽憶邯鄲畵意長。黃菊綴籬看卉歷。丹砂煮井學仙方。無餘佛昧還歸靜。不息天心亦自忙。送遠登臨蕭瑟處。西風鴻鴈若他鄕。

Translation: Cinemawords

I

Last night’s stars, last night’s frost; south city autumn thoughts stirring people long. Sky wind and human sounds — all nothing but teaching; the ink-place, the poetry forest — must have a direction. Who would have thought one goose marking year’s end? Suddenly suspecting ten thousand leaves rushing to appointment. White clouds and red trees drawing at the feeling: traveler’s dream stretching far — the crab-and-rice homeland.

II

Dimly seeing a realm of different smoke and frost; suddenly remembering the Handan painting-meaning long. Yellow chrysanthemums adorning the fence — watching the flower calendar; cinnabar simmering in the well — learning the immortal recipe. The Buddha of no-remainder — still returning to stillness; the unceasing heavenly heart — also naturally busy. Sending off the distant, ascending to the bleak place: west wind, wild geese — as if another homeland.

Reading notes:

Poem I opens by echoing Li Shangyin’s famous line: 昨夜星辰昨夜風 (last night’s stars, last night’s wind). Changing wind to frost (霜) shifts the register from erotic longing to the impersonality of autumn. “Sky wind and human sounds — all nothing but teaching” applies the Buddhist principle of the Dharma pervading phenomena: even the wind and the sound of voices are instruction, if heard correctly. The crab-and-rice homeland (蟹稻鄕) in the final line is a specific agricultural landscape — perhaps a childhood or familial homeland remembered through autumn’s characteristic foods.

Poem II’s “Handan painting-meaning” (邯鄲畵意) invokes the famous Handan dream: the scholar Lu Sheng lived an entire lifetime of ambition and decline in the span of cooking millet. The dream’s “painting-meaning” (畵意) suggests that the Handan experience has the quality of a scroll painting — a complete composition that can be contemplated from outside. “The Buddha of no-remainder — still returning to stillness” (無餘佛昧還歸靜): the nirvaṇa without remainder (無餘涅槃) is the final stillness after all karmic activity has ceased; even this ultimate emptiness “returns to stillness,” meaning silence is its own continual process.

酬李幼輿索茶。時自燕還。 (Responding to Yi Yuyo’s Request for Tea — He Has Just Returned from Beijing)

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

Form: Heptasyllabic regulated verse (七言律詩), 8 lines.

Occasion: Yi Yuyo (李幼輿, unidentified) has returned from a Beijing (Yan / 燕) visit and is requesting tea. Kim responds with a poem about Korean tea’s quality, invoking the Su Studio (蘇齋 — Weng Fanggang’s study, on first appearance in this installment: named for Su Dongpo, the center of Kim’s Beijing literary world) as evidence that Korean tea was specifically sought by the Beijing circle.

Original text:

休分鷄鶩野殊家。錦葉由來賽建芽。洌水曾同楊子品。蘇齋還覓高麗花。淸泉白石輸眞境。法乳醍醐破細霞。萬里囊空君莫笑。秪將靑眼對人夸。

Translation: Cinemawords

Don’t separate chicken and wild duck as different households; brocade leaves have always competed with Jian [Fujian] tea buds. The Yeol River [Han River] once shared Yang Xiong’s refined taste; the Su Studio still sought Goryeo’s flower [Korean tea]. Clear spring and white stone conveying the true realm; Dharma-milk ambrosia dispersing fine mist. Ten thousand li away, the bag empty — don’t laugh at me: just with blue eyes [keen appreciation] I boast to people.

Reading notes:

The poem’s argument is a defense of Korean tea against the assumption that Chinese tea (Jian tea / 建茶, from Fujian, the gold standard) is categorically superior. “Brocade leaves have always competed with Jian tea buds” makes the claim directly: Korean tea has always been a legitimate rival.

The evidence Kim adduces is personal and relational: the Su Studio (Weng Fanggang’s most famous study, named for his devotion to Su Dongpo) specifically sought Goryeo flower tea (高麗花). That Weng Fanggang wanted Korean tea is the highest authority Kim can invoke — the same authority he invokes for calligraphy, for painting, for scholarship. The Beijing-Korean connection is maintained even in the minor register of beverage preference.

“Dharma-milk ambrosia” (法乳醍醐) is a Buddhist metaphor for the highest teaching — applied here to the tea’s quality of dispersing the morning mist (細霞). The final couplet is self-deprecating with warmth: Kim’s bag is empty after the long journey, he has nothing to offer materially, but his refined appreciation (靑眼 / blue eyes — the clear-eyed appreciation of genuine quality, from Ruan Ji’s famous ability to show appreciation through his eyes) remains intact as currency.

夏夜初集 (First Summer Night Gathering)

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

Form: Heptasyllabic regulated verse (七言律詩), 8 lines.

Occasion: A poem written at a summer night’s first gathering.

Original text:

閉戶常存萬里心。雲飛水逝有誰禁。尙憐夏日孤花在。閱罷春山百鳥吟。已看靑眸回白眼。曾將一字易千金。詩家衣鉢傳來久。自是宗何與祖陰。

Translation: Cinemawords

Closed door, always harboring the ten-thousand-li heart; clouds flying and water flowing — who can stop them? Still feeling for the summer day’s solitary flower remaining; having finished reading spring mountain’s hundred birds singing. Already seen the blue eyes return to white [unimpressed] eyes; once exchanging one character for a thousand gold pieces. The poetic tradition has transmitted long: naturally — what is the school, and the ancestral influence?

Reading notes:

“Already seen the blue eyes return to white eyes” (已看靑眸回白眼): the allusion to Ruan Ji (阮籍, 210–263), who would show white eyes (blank, indifferent gaze) to conventional visitors but blue eyes (admiring recognition) to genuine talents. Kim inverts this: the blue eyes he once showed someone — indicating recognition — have “returned” to white, suggesting that what seemed like genuine appreciation has cooled. The disillusionment is not named but the image carries it.

“Once exchanging one character for a thousand gold pieces” (曾將一字易千金) invokes Lü Buwei’s Spring and Autumn Annals, which he posted publicly with the challenge that anyone who could improve a single character would receive a thousand gold pieces — implying the text was perfect. Applied to a poetic tradition, it means that the right word carries that weight.

“What is the school, and the ancestral influence?” closes the poem with a genuine literary-historical question. The “school” (宗) and the “ancestral shade” (祖陰) are the two sources of a poet’s formation — where does the current writer’s work come from, and what shelters it from above? The question is asked without being answered.

夏初泊翁適至 (Early Summer: Poktong Arrives Just Then)

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

Form: Heptasyllabic regulated verse (七言律詩), 8 lines.

Occasion: Poktong (泊翁 / “Anchored Elder,” a literary companion who appears also in poems 73, 100) arrives unexpectedly in early summer.

Original text:

七十年來翰墨林。尙能刻意不休吟。有花無酒幾多阻。對子論情一往深。及榻靑苔皆舊雨。捎簷佳樹尙春陰。生憐老去還靈慧。陣馬飈輪詎可禁。

Translation: Cinemawords

Seventy years in the forest of brush and ink; still able to deliberately, ceaselessly chant. Flowers without wine — how many obstacles? Facing you, discussing feeling — going deep once. Reaching the couch — the green moss all are old friends; brushing the eaves, beautiful trees still in spring shade. I pity and cherish him: growing old yet returning to spiritual wit — a war-horse and whirlwind wheel — how can they be stopped?

Reading notes:

Poktong is described as having spent seventy years in the world of brush and ink — an extraordinary span. The portrait is affectionate and admiring: a man who still presses himself (刻意 — deliberate, exacting effort), who still produces verse ceaselessly despite seven decades of practice. The “flowers without wine — how many obstacles?” registers a specific frustration: there are flowers visible and no wine available (a prohibition, or simply scarcity), yet Poktong arrives anyway, wine or not.

“Reaching the couch — the green moss all are old friends” (及榻靑苔皆舊雨): the moss on the sleeping mat and couch has grown because Kim hasn’t had visitors; when Poktong arrives, even the moss becomes an “old friend” (舊雨 / old rain — Du Fu’s phrase for intimate old companions). The eaves-brushing trees in spring shade — the whole hospitable outdoor setting — welcome Poktong’s arrival.

“A war-horse and whirlwind wheel — how can they be stopped?” is the highest compliment Kim gives in this volume: the image of unstoppable force applied to an old man’s literary vitality. Age has not diminished Poktong; it has only changed his vehicle.

次紫霞象山詩韻 (Rhyming the Verse of Jaha [Shin Wi] from Sangsan)

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

Form: Heptasyllabic regulated verse (七言律詩), 6 lines extant. The source indicates the remainder is missing: 以下缺 (the following is lost).

Occasion: Kim rhymes verse written by Shin Wi (신위 / 申緯, 1769–1845, on first appearance in this installment: poet and calligrapher, pen name Jaha / 紫霞 / “Purple Mist,” one of Kim’s most important literary friends; he appears throughout Volume 9) during his posting as magistrate at Sangsan (象山). The poem breaks off after six lines.

Original text:

君從詩境叩眞如。文藻猶能證舊墟。已聞空山參雨雪。且須碧海掣鯨魚。力追神韻尋無處。法本儒家學不疎。以下缺

Translation: Cinemawords

You, from the poetic realm, knock at the true-suchness; literary embellishment still able to testify to the old ruins. Already heard: in the empty mountain, participating in rain and snow; moreover must pull the whale-fish from the blue sea. Vigorously chasing the divine rhyme — finding no place; the method is essentially Confucian — the learning not shallow. [The following is missing in the source.]

Reading notes:

The poem’s six surviving lines address Shin Wi’s work from Sangsan with notable critical precision. “Knocking at the true-suchness” (叩眞如) from the poetic realm positions Shin Wi’s verse as practice directed at the ultimate — not decorative writing but an inquiry with Buddhist philosophical weight.

“Already heard: in the empty mountain, participating in rain and snow; moreover must pull the whale-fish from the blue sea” — these two lines describe the dual character of Shin Wi’s poetry: on one side the quiet contemplative participation in natural phenomena (rain and snow in the empty mountain), on the other the powerful, expansive gesture of pulling whales from the sea. The contrast is Kim’s estimate of Shin Wi’s range.

“Vigorously chasing the divine rhyme — finding no place”: this is the poem’s most interesting surviving line. The divine rhyme (神韻) is the quality of transcendence that the best classical poetry was said to possess. Shin Wi pursues it vigorously and finds no fixed location for it — not because he fails, but because the divine rhyme has no location to be found at; it is present when not sought and absent when chased. The poem breaks off precisely at the point where it might have resolved this paradox.

湊砌翠丈與燕中諸名士贈酬詩語談藪而成。好覺噴飯。 (Pieced Together from the Gifted-Verse, Exchanges, and Conversations Between Chuijang and the Various Famous Scholars of Beijing — Found Myself Bursting Out Laughing)

Period: Written during or following Kim’s Beijing visit; pre-exile period (before 1840).

Form: Heptasyllabic regulated verse (七言律詩), 8 lines. The poem is explicitly assembled from multiple sources, with inline annotations identifying the contributors of specific lines.

Occasion: A composite poem assembled (湊砌 — pieced together, collaged) from the literary conversations between Chuijang (翠丈 — “Elder Jade-Green,” an honorific for an unidentified figure in the Beijing circle) and various Beijing scholars. Annotated contributors include: Zhang Cha’nong (茶農), Liu Bairin (劉栢隣, appearing here; Guo Lanshi (郭蘭石), Wang Yeyou (王業友), and Cao Yushui (曹玉水, who appeared in poem 62 of this volume).

Original text:

朱霞天末若爲情。[用茶農詩語] 歷歷鴻泥又此行。萬里杯尊還浪跡。十年琴曲只遺聲。[劉栢隣] 使星自與文星動。妙理 [郭蘭石淸心聯] 多從畵理生。[公約今行。但收畵卷] 噀酒東方添雅謔。[王業友] 雄襟披拂四筵驚。[曹玉水句]

Translation: Cinemawords

Crimson mist at heaven’s end — what kind of feeling? [Using Zhang Cha’nong’s poetic language] Clear goose-tracks in mud — this journey again. Ten thousand li, cup and vessel — still wandering; ten years of zither music — only the lingering sound. [Liu Bairin’s contribution] The mission star moves naturally with the literary star; mysterious principle [from Guo Lanshi’s “Clear Heart” couplet] — much emerging from painting principles. [Gong Yue on this trip only collected paintings] Spraying wine toward the east — adding elegant humor; [Wang Yeyou’s contribution] heroic breast unfurling — startling the four banquet mats. [Cao Yushui’s line]

Reading notes:

A unique document in the Wandang Jeonjip: an explicitly assembled poem that names its sources line by line. Where poem 102’s ten-poem sequence preserved a session’s continuity, this poem preserves the scattered fragments of multiple conversations — a literary mixtape from the Beijing visit.

The annotations are doing structural work: they transform what might read as a coherent lyric into a record of sociality. “Liu Bairin’s contribution” and “Cao Yushui’s line” and “Wang Yeyou’s” identify specific creative acts by specific people. The poem is not Kim’s composition in the usual sense but a curation of what was said and sung in the room.

“Gong Yue on this trip only collected paintings” — the prose note tucked between lines 5 and 6 — is the document’s most unexpected element: a piece of gossip or observation about a specific Beijing scholar embedded in verse. The juxtaposition of high literary discourse and this practical note about someone’s collecting habits is comic, which explains Kim’s note that it made him burst out laughing. The poem’s form is as much its subject as its content: what literary exchange actually looks like, preserved at full resolution.

山寺 (Mountain Temple)

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

Form: Heptasyllabic regulated verse (七言律詩), 8 lines.

Occasion: A poem at an unnamed mountain temple.

Original text:

側峰橫嶺箇中眞。枉却從前十丈塵。龕佛見人如欲語。山禽挾子自來親。點烹筧竹冷冷水。供養盆花澹澹春。拭涕工夫誰得了。松風萬壑一嚬申。

Translation: Cinemawords

Lateral peak, horizontal ridge — the truth within here; in vain the previous ten-fathoms of dust. The shrine Buddha seeing people as if wanting to speak; mountain birds bringing their young coming naturally to be friends. Drop-simmered bamboo-pipe water, cold and cold; offering pot flowers, thin and thin spring. The work of wiping tears — who can complete it? Pine wind through ten thousand ravines — one brow-furrow, one stretch.

Reading notes:

The poem’s central image — “the shrine Buddha seeing people as if wanting to speak” (龕佛見人如欲語) — is the installment’s most charged line. The Buddha figure in its shrine niche observes everyone who enters; the “as if wanting to speak” hangs between pathos and theology. What would the Buddha say if the statue could speak? The unspoken answer is the poem’s subject.

“The work of wiping tears — who can complete it?” (拭涕工夫誰得了): this line is philosophically open. The “work” (工夫 / gongfu — practice, effort) of wiping tears could be the endless labor of responding to human suffering, or it could be the Buddhist practice of transcending the conditions that produce tears. Neither reading fully closes. That this work is incomplete — “who can complete it?” — acknowledges the impossibility of the task while honoring its necessity.

“Pine wind through ten thousand ravines — one brow-furrow, one stretch” is the poem’s closing image: the vast pine-wind sound producing a single physical response in the listening body, the sound too large for any reaction more specific than a contraction of the face.

西崦 (The Western Hillside)

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

Form: Heptasyllabic regulated verse (七言律詩), 8 lines.

Occasion: A poem at the Western Hillside (西崦 / 서엄), a specific location near Seoul.

Original text:

幽寄西崦寂寞濱。綠陰如夢一番春。虛拋居士稱翁歲。久惜維摩示病身。拳石瘦花添小築。靑苔舊雨欵來人。情知霽後尋詩好。贏得山光及四隣。

Translation: Cinemawords

Quietly dwelling at the Western Hillside’s desolate shore; green shade like a dream — one turn of spring. Vainly discarded: being called an elderly lay Buddhist; long lamenting: Vimalakirti demonstrating his sick body. A fist-sized stone, thin flower adding to the small structure; green moss, old friends earnestly coming. Well knowing: after clearing, seeking poems is best; getting: mountain light extending to the four neighbors.

Reading notes:

“Vimalakirti demonstrating his sick body” (維摩示病身): Vimalakirti in the famous sutra feigns illness to draw the Bodhisattvas to his small room, where he then delivers the great teaching on non-duality. The “sick body” is an expedient means — the illness teaches. Kim describes himself as “long lamenting” this teaching, implying he understands it but cannot fully enact it. He is at the Western Hillside rather than drawing disciples to his room; his illness is real rather than strategic.

“A fist-sized stone, thin flower adding to the small structure” (拳石瘦花添小築): the hermitage built up from the minimal — a stone small enough to hold in one hand, a sparse flower, an incremental construction. This is the aesthetic of radical reduction carried to its practical conclusion.

“After clearing, seeking poems is best” (霽後尋詩好): one of the clearest articulations in this volume of the post-rain quality as the optimal condition for poetry. The clearing after rain produces a quality of light and air that is specifically poetic. “Getting: mountain light extending to the four neighbors” — the poem’s final gain, the light that reaches beyond the hermit’s single dwelling.

歡城道中 (On the Road Through Hwanseong)

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

Form: Heptasyllabic regulated verse (七言律詩), 8 lines.

Occasion: A road poem while traveling through Hwanseong (歡城 / 환성), a town in Gyeonggi Province.

Original text:

牛宮豚柵幾人家。官柳依然一路賖。烟嶂遙連雲似馬。水田斜映日如車。重看古樹添新瘤。前度荒溪沒舊叉。氷齒初鬚俱老大。十年彈指可堪嗟。

Translation: Cinemawords

Cow-houses and pig-pens — how many households? Government willows still lining the long road. Smoke-ridges connecting far — clouds like horses; water paddies at slant catching sun like a cart wheel. Looking again at old trees that have added new growths; the desolate stream from before has swallowed the old branch. The teeth of ice [youth] and first beard — both have grown old: ten years in the snap of fingers — how lamentable.

Reading notes:

A travel poem that turns entirely on the recognition of time passing. The first four lines are observational: cattle, pigs, willows, smoke-ridges, paddies — the agricultural road landscape catalogued precisely. Clouds like horses, sun like a cart wheel: two parallel similes that animate the static landscape with borrowed motion.

Then the pivot at line 5: the old trees have new growths (old gnarls and lumps added to the bark), and the stream has changed course (the desolate stream has “swallowed” the old branch-point, meaning the channel has shifted). The landscape Kim traveled ten years ago is recognizably the same landscape and recognizably different.

“The teeth of ice and first beard — both have grown old” (氷齒初鬚俱老大): 氷齒 (teeth of ice) is a classical image for the coldness of youth — the sharp, unweathered quality of early life. 初鬚 (first beard) is the beard’s beginning. Both have aged: the teeth have lost their icy sharpness, the first beard has become a full beard. Ten years in the snap of fingers — the snap (彈指, a Buddhist figure for a brief instant) applied to a decade makes time both extremely brief and, looking back, inexplicably consumed.

失題 二首 (Untitled — Two Poems)

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

Form: Heptasyllabic regulated verse (七言律詩), 8 lines each; two poems.

Occasion: Two untitled poems addressed to or about Oh Nanseol (吳蘭雪 / 吳嵩梁, 1766–1834), the prominent Chinese poet who has sent Kim a self-titled poem that spring. Nanseol appears throughout Volume 9 and is one of Kim’s most important Beijing connections; 蘭雪 refers to him throughout.

Original text:

其一 蘭雪文章老更奇。今春寄我自題詩。黃鍾大呂中和律。碧樹珊瑚錯落枝。小別桑田如昨日。重逢飯顆定何時。故人衰謝年年甚。面皺鷄皮鬢鷺絲。

其二 萬里論交事亦奇。廿年離緖數行詩。書從落鴈天邊寄。夢繞扶桑海外枝。文字古來通遠域。身名老去負淸時。弓衣傳唱知多少。肯爲都官理繡絲。

Translation: Cinemawords

I

Nanseol’s writing grows more remarkable with age; this spring he sent me his self-titled poem. Grand Bell and Great Lü — the balanced harmonious law; green-jade trees and coral — randomly scattered branches. Small parting — mulberry-field like yesterday; meeting again with rice pellets — when for certain? Old friends declining year by year much: face wrinkled as chicken skin, temples white as egret-threads.

II

Ten thousand li — discussing friendship, also extraordinary; twenty years of separation’s feelings — several lines of poetry. Letters sent riding fallen geese from heaven’s edge; dreams winding around Fusang’s [China’s] branches beyond the sea. Writing has long connected distant territories; body and name growing old, failing the pure times. Bow-garment transmitted and sung — who knows how many? Would you be the metropolitan official to manage the embroidery thread?

Reading notes:

Two poems on aging friendship across distance. “Meeting again with rice pellets — when for certain?” (重逢飯顆定何時) alludes to Du Fu’s poem about meeting Li Bai: Du Fu offered Li Bai rice pellets from his hat, an act of small, affectionate domesticity that could never quite be repeated. The question — when will we meet with that quality of intimacy again? — carries the melancholy of correspondence poetry that knows the answer.

“Face wrinkled as chicken skin, temples white as egret-threads” (面皺鷄皮鬢鷺絲) is one of the volume’s most explicit images of physical aging. The chicken-skin face and the egret-thread temples are not generalized; they are the specific textures of a friend’s body observed over decades of correspondence. Oh Nanseol is over sixty when these poems are written; the images are accurate.

Poem II’s “Fusang’s branches beyond the sea” (扶桑海外枝): Fusang is the mythological eastern island, but from Kim’s Korean perspective China lies to the west — so “beyond the sea” to Fusang applies Korea’s geographical position. Dreams winding around the branches of China’s literary tradition: the twenty-year separation is measured in letters and dreams, not visits.

楊州途中 (On the Yangju Road)

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

Form: Heptasyllabic regulated verse (七言律詩), 8 lines.

Occasion: A road poem while traveling through Yangju (楊州 / 양주), a county in Gyeonggi Province north of Seoul. The name shares the character 楊 with Yangzhou (揚州) in China, activating Du Mu’s famous poem about that city.

Original text:

霜晨搖落歎征衣。極目平原秋草稀。天地蕭蕭虛籟合。山川歷歷數鴻歸。淡烟喬木圍孤墅。流水平沙易夕暉。淮北江南何處是。二分明月夢依微。

Translation: Cinemawords

Frost morning, fallen leaves, lamenting the travel garment; gazing to the limit — flat plain, autumn grass sparse. Heaven and earth bleakly — desolate sounds joining; mountains and rivers clear by clear — counting returning geese. Thin smoke, tall trees encircling the solitary homestead; flowing water, flat sand — easily the evening light. North of the Huai, south of the Yangzi — where is it? Two-thirds bright moon — dream faint and wavering.

Reading notes:

“Two-thirds bright moon” (二分明月) quotes the famous line attributed to Xu Ninggu about Yangzhou: that if the moonlight of the world were divided, two-thirds would go to Yangzhou. Du Mu (803–852), the most celebrated poet of that city, is implied. Kim is traveling through the Korean Yangju, which shares the character, and the name-echo activates the entire Chinese Yangzhou tradition — its famous moonlit evenings, its elegance, its melancholy — as a frame for the Korean road poem.

“North of the Huai, south of the Yangzi — where is it?” (淮北江南何處是): the two great geographical markers of central China — the Huai River divides north and south; the Yangzi defines the south. The question “where is it?” asked from Korea about China’s defining landscape is both geographical (genuinely uncertain) and emotional (longing for a place one can name but not locate with the body).

“Dream faint and wavering” (夢依微): the poem closes on a barely-there quality — the two-thirds moon and all it represents accessible only in a dream that is itself barely present.

與右申，士毅，景言共賦。 (Written Together with Ushin, Saui, and Gyeongon)

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

Form: Heptasyllabic regulated verse (七言律詩), 8 lines.

Occasion: A collaborative poem with three literary companions — Ushin (右申 / 우신, unidentified), Saui (士毅 / 사의, unidentified), and Gyeongon (景言 / 경언, who appeared also in poem 27 of this volume).

Original text:

異夢頻驚鼠穴車。久於塵俗悟眞如。揮觴欲挽無多景。充架空慙未觸書。鶴氣橫空言以外。松聲呑屋睡之餘。憐君好事時相訪。絶似寥寥揚子居。

Translation: Cinemawords

Different dreams frequently startled — rat-hole cart; long in the dusty world — awakening to true suchness. Swinging the cup wanting to hold back — not many more scenes; filling the shelves in vain, ashamed of books untouched. Crane-energy spanning the void — beyond words; pine sound swallowing the house — sleeping’s aftermath. I pity and love you — good friends, occasionally visiting: exactly like the quiet solitude of Yang Xiong’s dwelling.

Reading notes:

“Rat-hole cart” (鼠穴車) alludes to a dream from the Zhuangzi: someone dreams they are traveling in a cart that enters a rat hole. The image is used for being trapped in dreams of small, confined ambitions. “Long in the dusty world — awakening to true suchness” (久於塵俗悟眞如) is the Buddhist pivot: the same duration in the world that produced small-cart dreams also produces awakening to the nature of reality. The two are not opposed but sequential.

“Filling the shelves in vain, ashamed of books untouched” (充架空慙未觸書): the books are there, the shelves are full, but the scholar has not been reading — absorbed instead in the dusty world’s business. The admission is unusually direct.

Yang Xiong (楊子, 53 BCE–18 CE) retired from official life and received visitors at his quiet residence, which became a classical figure for the scholar-hermit’s dwelling. “Exactly like Yang Xiong’s dwelling” — the occasional visitors arriving at his quiet residence — frames Kim’s own situation with affectionate irony: the great thinker at home, visited by friends when they can.

石瓊樓。與諸公分韻。 (Seongnyou Tower: Dividing Rhymes with the Assembled Companions)

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

Form: Heptasyllabic regulated verse (七言律詩), 8 lines.

Occasion: A gathering at Seongnyou Tower (石瓊樓 / 석경루), where the participants divided rhymes (分韻) — the literary game in which each participant draws a character and must use it as their rhyme. Kim’s assigned character is 分 (to divide, to share).

Original text:

十載甘爲靑桂群。石如解語鳥能文。亭還舊雨非今雨。簷放朝雲遞宿雲。邱壑尋常容置我。華亭一半許同君。紛紛鞵襪元多事。地肺天胎此十分。

Translation: Cinemawords

Ten years content to be among the green osmanthus group; stone as if understanding language, birds able to write. The pavilion returns to old rain [old friends], not today’s rain; the eaves releasing morning clouds, exchanging with overnight clouds. Hills and valleys ordinarily accommodating me; Huating [pavilion] — one half — permitting sharing with you. Scattered shoes and socks — originally much business; earth-lung and heaven-womb — this, fully.

Reading notes:

Ten years of gatherings at Seongnyou Tower, and the group is described as the “green osmanthus group” (靑桂群) — osmanthus associated with the moon and with literary achievement, its fragrance the classical accompaniment to the harvest moon banquet. “Stone as if understanding language, birds able to write” is Kim’s characteristic attribution of literary capacity to the non-human.

“The pavilion returns to old rain, not today’s rain” (亭還舊雨非今雨): Du Fu’s distinction between old friends (old rain) and new acquaintances (today’s rain) applied to the pavilion itself — the gathering reconstitutes the old bonds rather than forming new ones.

“Earth-lung and heaven-womb — this, fully” (地肺天胎此十分): the closing line applies Daoist cosmological terms (earth-lung = the mountain cave that provides the earth’s breath; heaven-womb = the primordial creative matrix) to Seongnyou Tower. The tower is fully both of these — fully the place where the earth breathes and heaven generates. The hyperbole is characteristic of the divided-rhyme game, where the assigned character (here 分, “divide/share”) must appear, and “this, fully” (此十分 — ten parts / completely) satisfies the constraint while making an extravagant cosmological claim.

水落山寺 (Suraksan Temple)

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

Form: Heptasyllabic regulated verse (七言律詩), 8 lines.

Occasion: A Buddhist-philosophical poem at the temple complex of Suraksan (水落山寺 / 수락산사). The poem’s vocabulary is dense with Chan references and ends with a deliberate yielding gesture drawn from the game of go.

Original text:

轉世風輪導衆迷。却將表所眩東西。久忘言說千山寂。誰遣機緣一鳥啼。平等熱關仍淨界。朅來黃蘗與曹溪。土山水火如拈解。且讓輸君此着低。

Translation: Cinemawords

The turning-world wind-wheel leading the multitudes astray; yet using external manifestations to confuse east and west. Long forgetting verbal explanation — a thousand mountains silent; who sent the mechanism-and-conditions — one bird’s cry? The equal [Buddhist] fever-gate still a pure realm; coming from Huangbo and Caoji [the two great Chan streams]. Earth, mountain, water, fire — as if picked up and understood: for now let me yield — giving you this lower move.

Reading notes:

The poem is organized around the transition from confusion to understanding, using two great Chan lineages as its frame. Huangbo (黃蘗) is the Tang master Huangbo Xiyun, whose powerful, direct teaching style is associated with the Linji school. Caoji (曹溪) is the monastery of Huineng, the Sixth Patriarch — the fountainhead of Southern Chan. “Coming from Huangbo and Caoji” positions the poem as drawing on both streams of the Chan inheritance.

“Long forgetting verbal explanation — a thousand mountains silent” (久忘言說千山寂): the poem’s pivot. Verbal teaching falls away, and what remains is the thousand mountains’ silence — which is not the absence of teaching but its deepest form. “Who sent the mechanism-and-conditions — one bird’s cry?” (誰遣機緣一鳥啼): the bird’s single cry arrives as an instance of pure mechanism-and-conditions (機緣 / jiyuan) — the Chan term for the situation in which awakening becomes possible. No one sent it; it arrives from the conditions themselves.

“For now let me yield — giving you this lower move” (且讓輸君此着低): the go metaphor at the close frames the entire poem as a deliberate concession. Kim yields to the mountain’s deeper Chan wisdom rather than pressing his own argument. The yielded move is not defeat but a recognition that some teachings are better received than argued.

次黃山韻 二首 (Rhyming Hwangsan’s Verse — Two Poems)

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

Form: Heptasyllabic regulated verse (七言律詩), 8 lines each; two poems.

Occasion: Two poems rhyming the verse of Hwangsan (黃山 / “Yellow Mountain,” a literary companion who appears also in poems 29, 76, 90, and elsewhere).

Original text:

其一 旋開群白又叢紅。春色安排次第中。佳節有名逢穀雨。韶光無日不番風。眼前幻相應如是。分外繁華復不空。今夜可憐花上月。淸輝入酒去年同。

其二 芳辰對酒每咨嗟。難把酒錢歲月賖。愧我塡腸同麥飯。如君稀世是菖花。蠅蚊應少拈茶處。蜂蝶爭喧嫁棗家。滿眼石榴開似火。門前轢轢到詩車。

Translation: Cinemawords

I

Quickly opening — crowds of white again clusters of red; spring color arranged in orderly succession. Auspicious festival with a famous name — meeting the Grain Rain; bright spring light no day without seasonal breezes. The illusory appearances before the eyes — should be like this; beyond what’s expected — splendid, and also not empty. Tonight — pitiable, the moon on the flowers: clear radiance entering the wine — same as last year.

II

Fragrant time facing wine — always lamenting; hard to manage wine money — years and months on credit. Ashamed: my belly filled just like barley-rice; like you — rare in the world, this sweet flag iris flower. Flies and mosquitoes should be fewer where tea is picked; bees and butterflies competing noisily at the date-grafting household. Eyes full of pomegranate blossoms opening like fire: before the gate — the creaking-creaking poetry cart arriving.

Reading notes:

The two poems are pitched in contrasting registers: the first meditative and Buddhist-inflected, the second playful and agricultural. Poem I’s “the illusory appearances before the eyes — should be like this” (眼前幻相應如是) is a Buddhist observation: the proliferating spring colors, the “beyond what’s expected” splendor, are illusory appearances (幻相) — and yet their being such is precisely what the Dharma says they should be. The moon on the flowers “same as last year” closes on the particular melancholy of seasonal repetition: the same moon, the same wine, the gap a year wide.

Poem II is more personal and deflating. “My belly filled just like barley-rice” (塡腸同麥飯): Kim describes himself as common fare, filled with ordinary grain, while Hwangsan is the rare iris (菖花 — sweet flag flower, associated with the Dragon Boat Festival, precious and seasonal). The contrast is a compliment to Hwangsan rendered through mock self-deprecation.

“Before the gate — the creaking-creaking poetry cart arriving” (門前轢轢到詩車) closes the poem with an image of the inexhaustible: the poetry keeps coming, audible as a cart approaching, wheels creaking on stone.

薊門雪中 (Snow at Jimen)

Period: Written during Kim’s 1809 Beijing visit or a related trip; pre-exile period (before 1840).

Form: Heptasyllabic regulated verse (七言律詩), 8 lines.

Occasion: A snow poem at Jimen (薊門 / 계문), the ancient gateway north of Beijing where travelers from the northeast traditionally approached the capital. The poem captures the Beijing winter landscape.

Original text:

斷送漫天匝地埃。車簾漠漠向空開。遠人漸細分明見。孤鳥當前的歷來。妃子祠邊珠欲碎。仙人田畔玉成堆。憑誰畵取荒凉景。雜樹圍村倂是梅。

Translation: Cinemawords

Sweeping away the sky-filling, earth-encircling dust; cart curtain desolate opening toward empty space. Distant people gradually thinning, clearly visible; a solitary bird ahead — distinctly coming. By the Concubine Shrine — pearls wanting to shatter [falling snow]; by the Immortal’s Field — jade piling in heaps [accumulated snow]. Who can paint this desolate scene? Mixed trees encircling the village — all are plum.

Reading notes:

Snow as purification: the poem opens with snow “sweeping away” the dust that fills sky and earth — the Beijing winter clearing the accumulated grime of the northern city. The cart curtain opened toward empty space gives the poem its visual angle: a traveler’s view from behind a curtain suddenly opened onto a snow-white void.

The two middle couplets work through the classical figures for snow — pearls (珠 / 구슬) for falling flakes, jade (玉 / 옥) for accumulated drifts — but grounded in specific Beijing topographies: the Concubine Shrine (妃子祠, a historical shrine near Jimen), and the Immortal’s Field (仙人田, a local toponym). Snow in these specific places: the classical imagery given address.

“Mixed trees encircling the village — all are plum” closes the poem with a discovery: looking around after the snow has fallen, what seemed like ordinary mixed trees reveals itself as a plum grove. Snow whitens everything to the same apparent blankness; the plum blossoms, which bloom in snow, make visible what was already there but required this particular condition to see. The poem ends on recognition rather than desolation.

偶作 (Improvised Verse)

Period: Jeju exile period (1840–1848), likely mid-exile around 1846. The poem contains 遠謫 (distant exile), a direct exile marker, and the reference to sixty years of “grinding by the red dust” is consistent with Kim’s age during the mid-exile period.

Form: Heptasyllabic regulated verse (七言律詩), 8 lines.

Occasion: An undated improvised verse from the Jeju exile. Like poem 64 earlier in this volume, it appears among pre-exile works as a sequencing anomaly in the source text. The poem’s physical specificity — unsteady walking, medicine-taking, tea — and the explicit exile vocabulary confirm the Jeju period.

Original text:

不算甛中與苦邊。天風一笠亦隨緣。飄零白髮三千丈。折磨紅塵六十年。我愛沈冥頻中聖。人憐遠謫漫稱山。蹣跚簷底時行藥。消受茶罏半篆烟。

Translation: Cinemawords

Not counting sweet within and bitter edge; sky wind and one bamboo hat — also following conditions. Drifting and scattering — white hair three thousand zhang; ground down by the red dust for sixty years. I love deep dark [wine-intoxication], frequently “hitting the saint” [drunk]; people pity the distant exile, randomly calling me “Mountain.” Unsteadily under the eaves, sometimes taking medicine; enjoying the tea-stove’s half-incense smoke.

Reading notes:

The volume’s second exile poem in Volume 9, and almost certainly the last. The first (poem 64) was recognizable by its Jeju landscape; this one identifies itself through explicit language — 遠謫 (distant exile) is the clearest possible marker — and through the physical portrait of a man in his mid-sixties (sixty years of “red dust” grinding) who walks unsteadily, takes medicine, and sits by his tea-stove.

“Hitting the saint” (中聖 — zhong sheng) is the classical euphemism for achieving intoxication, from the Three Kingdoms period: Cao Cao, having prohibited alcohol, saw his subjects develop coded vocabulary — “clear wine” was “the sage” (聖人), and to “hit the saint” was to reach the desired state. Kim uses it with self-deprecating lightness: his love of wine-darkness in exile is presented as a personal preference alongside the medicine and the tea.

“People pity the distant exile, randomly calling me Mountain” (人憐遠謫漫稱山) — the 山 (mountain) is a playful appellation, perhaps people calling Kim a “mountain hermit” or addressing him by a mountain-related title. The 漫 (randomly, carelessly) suggests the naming is affectionate but not quite accurate: he is not a mountain hermit by choice, and pity is not the affect he seeks.

“Enjoying the tea-stove’s half-incense smoke” (消受茶罏半篆烟): the curling smoke from the tea-stove, shaped like seal script (篆), is the poem’s final image — the aesthetic of reduced circumstances. Half of the incense smoke, carefully observed.

Eighteen heptasyllabic regulated verses, a single form sustained from poem 113 to poem 130 without variation. Within that formal consistency, the subjects scatter — playful imitation, autumn reflection, tea, summer gathering, an incomplete poem, a collage, a temple, a road, a snow scene, and exile. The formal constancy makes the variation in occasion and mood more perceptible rather than less: each new subject arriving in exactly the same container throws the difference into relief. Part 8, the final installment of Volume 9, gathers poems 131–152 — a group that includes the major sixteen-panel poem sequence for Oh Nanseol’s sixtieth birthday, the six poems on poetry theory for Kim Myeong-hui, and the volume’s closing pair.