Early morning road

Mother!
First, you sold a few handfuls of scalded greens,
some bunches of radishes
from your vegetable basket.
Then, as your son was leaving home,
kicking the dew along the early morning road,
mother,
you said, 'Go up to Seoul and make good,
really make good!'
You gave him a ball of salted rice, and the fare.
Then, after your son had left home,
mother,
you set the Seven Stars of the Great Wain
on your white hair, though those stars lost
their miraculous powers a thousand years ago,
and you prayed and prayed,
firmly fixed before a bowl of cold water,
and mother,
thanks to all those prayers you said
your son became a drunken lout.
Seoul? Nothing but a foreign colony,
and then again, a new colony
where sunset is a rotten pumpkin sinking
into the lower reaches of the River Han!
For thirty long years he served the Yanks,
grew old and sick working as their houseboy.
Whenever he drank there was so much to say,
and always a reborn breast, as well,
but when the next morning dawned, lo and behold,
there in his breast a gaping hole again,
and clearly visible through that hole
the early morning road of a day long ago.
Mother
you can clearly be seen
gazing after your son as he goes on his way,
standing long on the village hilltop.
Now that's enough,
go back home to your mud-walled poverty,
don't keep counting off on your fingers
the days and the months,
waiting for your son to appear.
There was a blizzard,
a blizzard and a downpour.
Your son became a drunken lout.
Not a rich man in a house
with twelve front doors,
only press a bell and it all gets done,
with powers that devour the rights of a thousand,
commandeering the goods of thousands more.
Your son
has nothing,
nothing at all,
his leper's eyebrows are all gone too,
and when your son turned forty one day
as he roused himself from a drunken stupor
he smashed the glass in his open hand
then grasped it,
blood flowed red, red as a new-made world.
He beat his breast and beat his brow,
the blood poured down. No,
he must not wait any longer now.
He must not wait, a drunken lout.
I have abolished the coming day,
that day awaited for five thousand years,
after such long ages, five hundred years, fifty years,
ages with South and North chopped in two at the waist,
rifle barrel to rifle barrel,
ages with this one and that one acting as puppet;
that day will come, it will certainly come,
if you only keep waiting -- I have quite abolished it.
Mother,
do not ask when that day will come,
that day when each family will be united
in one embrace,
when the sun will rise in every heart,
do not ask.
Now mother's drunken loutish son
is on his way to the battlefield,
to the battlefield where only the fight
can make life possible.
In the bitter wind on the early morning road,
with fists clenched I kneaded the ball of rice
you gave me.
My heart is brimming full with bitterness,
full of that money you gave for the fare.
This present day is your long long waiting.
At break of dawn,
setting out along the early morning road,
my body has turned into a sharpened knife,
turned into a blaze of fire in the dark;
after the fight I will return
with that day loaded on my back.
With a blood-stained banner waving,
that tattered banner streaming out,
with my wounded leg roughly bound up,
I will return, bearing that day.
That day is your son.
That day is every mother's son.
No, mother, I can't say that.
I recall the sorrow of your blasted breasts
swaying as you pounded barley
in the days of our youth;
now your son has died
and reduced to blanched bones
whimpers for the milk of your sorrow again.
Mother,
in his old age your son sets out for the battlefield
and surely that day will come,
sustained by five thousand years of history.
Our nation will be one.