A Horse Sleeps Standing Up - Chong Chin'gyu

A Horse Sleeps Standing Up

My son is learning judo:
he says he spent two years
learning how to fall.
Imagine, learning the art of falling!
Those two years he spent
learning how to fall
I spent bursting myself not to fall
because the world taught me
that one fall is all you get;
you don't get up.
I couldn't lie down
even when I fell asleep;
I was a horse who slept standing up.
Son, son, I'm ashamed!
Even flowing water leaps
down the cliff.
I dream every night,
but I'm a horse that sleeps standing up.


- Chong Chin'gyu, "A Horse Sleeps Standing Up," collected in Mirrored Minds: A Thousand Years of Korean Verse, trans. Kevin O'Rourke, Eastward Books, 2001: p. 199-200.