Reading a Sijo by Marie Faverio

Stormy Morning, as it appears from my balcony

Marie Faverio lives in New South Wales. She is studying Asian poetry while composing her own: four poetry books. I am a Bohemian spirit, she says about herself.

Firstly you should check these stances by contemporary Korean poets. It is what they call Sijo: a specific Korean form of poetry:

In the Grass (Chi Song-Chan, b. 1942)

I become the grass
where my lovely Suntee runs at play.
The more she treads it
the greener it grows.
Suddenly she flares,
a red flower.


Snowy Period (Song Son-Yong, b. 1939)

Here is a bird that carries dusk home
after roving the wind-swept fields.
This is a bird that returns
driving firelights onto the dark yard.
Here is a bird that pecks at my memory
brooding on the camellia of my heart.


The Cricket (Pak Kyong-Yong, b. 1940)

Flowing out and over
the moonlight submerges the world below.
Your cry calling your mate
echoes faintly in the air.
How will you cross the evening sky,
a thousand miles of night road,
ten thousand miles of water road?

Your grief anchored at the ferrypoint
where lamentations gleam and glimmer,
I sorrow over your spirit that spins
like a length of thread. O cricket,
both of us cry for our mates,
though an impassable river separates us.


And here is an extended Sijo composed by Marie Faverio. Enjoy!

Sitting here at dawn,
under a colour-crazy sky
spilling visions
over angularities,
I try to discern
some godly utterance
that may give sense
to my life,
an incipient sound or form
gravid with in-fieris.

The dark's collapse
bails out the nimble-winged possibilities
of the uncertain,
making room for unwalled horizons -
scary sometimes -,
among birds exploding
into unrestrained impromptus.

The gulls are less excited.
They don't screech
like during the day.
They smear the sky
with muffled wings,
splitting brimfuls of colours.

People are already jogging
along Sri Chinmoy's Peace Path
before facing another busy day
in the City.

I'm just waiting for more light
to write a new poem.

(A Life in Books)