Keumgang-Gul / Diamond Cave Poem by Ko Un

What a relief
you cannot live everywhere all at once.
Today, here in Diamond Cave,
there's no longer any reason to live.
Stay one or two days:
this world
& the Other are drained of difference.

Wind blows.
As a pearl is born at seabottom in agony
out of oyster flesh from within the most obscure darkness
here the wind blows from the depths.

I want to travel far & then return.
The wind blows as if I were eighty-five,
maybe eighty-seven.