Through the streets I wandered...

through the streets,
i could see old Korea everywhere,
they were all there
the old servants, the old yang-bans,
they were there,
Korea was a land of the spirits...
the will was there
and history was omnipresent...

my first love, the young girl I desperately
fell in love with when I was six,
she would slap me silly for saying this,
but she was there too
and the sounds and scents of Korea,
my old and permanent home
drinking away into the evening.

my mother and the wonderfully homemade dinners,
kim-chi chee-gae and other foods which I dearly loved,
husbands coming home after a long day's work, drinking hard into the liquid night,
asking for some recognition of their dreams and their work,
they were there too, also.

Giant figures from the past,
majestic palaces and an independent sense of things,
no matter how many bad things foreigners say about Korea,
Koreans don't give a fuck
'cause we have a home
and we've built a wall around our home.

Strength was there and pride was there
and most of all
a cliche, I admit, my heart
floated there
like a boat.