Immigrants’ Dream
---for my fellow immigrants
By Yearn Hong Choi
We came to this country with new hope, new dream and new ambition.
We came to this country with much bigger hope, dream and ambition.
In May 1968, I came to Seattle with $70 in my pocket.
I finished my studies, while washing dishes
and working in factories every summer.
Teaching in the fall of 1972
I found myself the” immigrant” enveloped within
The great heart of the University of Wisconsin.
Later, the enormity of the Pentagon, HUD and NASA
Might have further diminished “the immigrant”.
It didn’t. It raised his stature to giant dimensions.
2006 welcomed the immigrant to a new journey, the pleasant land of retirement.
This is still an open country,
A vast country from the Pacific to the Atlantic.
This is an open country for you.
Please embrace your dream.
The sky is the limit.
You had a bold dream for a richer, affluent and prosperous life,
With great hope and greater courage
You made this new country your hearth and home.
Your dreams deserve to be fulfilled in this country of opportunity.
The immigrants,
They made America Great.
The immigrants are US, the United States of America..
We are America.
Our dreams, our sweat moves this, our country, this country forward,
This world moves forward
The Depression we see today
Our children and their children will not witness tomorrow and the day after tomorrow.
Because We, the immigrants, will move this Country forward as in the past.
My fellow new citizens,
Let us do our very best.
God will help those who help themselves.
Let our sons and daughters see our dream
Let our sons and daughters witness
The achievement of our dreams.
The Lady of Liberty offers Her light and guidance
Her torch, Her light is the ray of hope
Sailing from the darkened sea of night
Welcome home brothers and sisters!
Welcome to our harbor
Of New Hope, New Dream and New Ambition.
Welcome fellow immigrants no longer.
Welcome my fellow Citizens.
A Miracle
The US 10th Army Corps was beginning to retreat from Port of Heungnam on December 10, 1950. The Korean refugees were coming to the port to get a boat to the South.
Captain Leonard La Rue’s 100,000-ton merchant fleet was ready to embark for the South Sea, but he could not disregard the refugees seeking the lifeboat. Meredith Victory left the port with them on December 22 and arrived safely at Koje Island on Christmas Day . They sang Christmas carols.
The 14,000 refugees were standing shoulder to shoulder on the ship’s open decks like anchovies in a small can. Only heat was body heat augmented by togetherness. They could not drink or eat during the voyage. The ship was not supposed to carry any passengers other 47 crew members. Five babies were born on the sea. No one got hurt when they disembarked at the Island. It was a miracle.
When he was ready to leave Heungnam Port, Captain La Rue heard the words, “Don’t leave the refugees in the port!” Those words made him enter the Catholic monastery and changed his name Brother Marinus. It comes not from the Latin word for the sea but from Mary, “the Blessed Mother of God.” He said: “I think often of that voyage. I think of how such a small vessel was able to hold so many persons and surmount endless perils without harm to a soul. And as I think, the clear, unmistakable message comes to me that on that Christmastide, in the bleak and bitter waters off the shores of Korea, God’s own hand was at the helm of my ship.”
A miracle was witnessed by Captain La Rue, 47 crew members, 14,000 refugees, and five new babies, collectively. The miracle still remains with waves of the winter sea; the miracle still shines with the stars in the blue and dark winter sky. The miracle still cleans my soul in the cold winter night, long after the ship was dismantled, and even after Brother Marinus passed away to Heaven.
Poem: Economy
First, it had no symptoms in the firms on Wall Street.
Later, it was known as cancer.
Very quickly, the cancer spread to the whole body.
They detected an AIG virus in a small lab.
Strangely, the firms made profits in the last ten years or so.
They enjoyed bubbles all along the Wall.
Inside the bubbles the virus was hibernating like a frog and snake.
Then, they declared bankruptcies.
It was all that simple.
They went to the taxpayers for a bailout.
Innocent investors fell down on the Street of the world.
65 percent of their investments disappeared without a scar.
The cancer spread out new viruses
Subprime virus, Freddie Mac virus, Fannie Mae virus,
Greenspan virus and Madoff virus.
Then, GM, Ford and Chrysler fell down.
Viruses breeding new viruses
Greed, swindle and corruption
In bubbles or fog that kill innocent people slowly and gradually.
Unprecedented casualties in human history as yet unknown.
No inventor has yet discovered the vaccine
which can kill the Greenspan virus and Madoff virus.
Good doctors just announced:
We should study more about those new viruses.
I am nostalgic to the agrarian society in this modern age.
In the long winter nights, a farmer’s dreams are narrow,
Over and over, he enters the furrow.*
*quoted from Robert Haas’ poem, “Iowa, January.”
Annapolis
I fall in love,
A small city on seaside,
More exactly on bayside
On the way to the ocean.
It is not exactly a city;
It is rather a town
Of the 18th century town planning
In which the church is located at the center.
More than that,
It is a garden with the waters and yacht.
Annapolis,
A lovely name comparable to a young lover’s name:
Spring is beautiful with white and pink magnolia;
Summer is vital blue with crab swimming on the surface
Of water;
Autumn is melancholic with changing colors; and
Winter is snow covered garden once in a while.
I discover the town
On the way to discovering American history—
The English subject sailed the Atlantic,
The Chesapeake Bay,
And settled down at a placid bay area.
I love the town of historic preservation of
Of narrow roads and cobblestone streets
On the waterfront
In between the river and the ocean.
I love the crab and oyster harvested from
The best fishing ground
Of the Earth.
Yosemite National Park
it was a long journey from San Francisco to the Yosemite National Park to enjoy just cool wind, tall pine trees, granite rocks, deer, bear, creek, river, waterfalls, Panorama, rainbow at the Bridal Veil, and Cloud's Rest. I did rest at the Cloud-resting area and watched the moon rising over the rock. I placed my two bare feet in the creek water for 30 minutes. I met John Muir who was enjoying the fresh wind in the Sierra Club. Yosemite has finally become my permanent property.
American Tragedy
--at Virginia Tech
A mad man armed with the sophisticated guns killed 32 innocent people.
Where did he get the guns?
Gun-shop and mail-order.
What’s the purpose of the gun-shop and mail-order?
Promoting killing!
Killing is a kind of business in the free market society.
Can you believe it?
Freedom to possess the guns is a kind of freedom
The most advanced democratic nation on the Earth promotes.
How come man-killing guns are a kind of goods in the market?
It should be no good, because it is no good and it has no good.
Capitalism, freedom and democracy are strangely mixed with
The massive deaths of 32 men and women killed in an American tragedy.
Confusion
The killer’s name was Cho Seung-hui.
Then his name became Seung Hui Cho.
Are there two killers?
No! They are one.
The Korean people in Korea complained: his name must be Seung Hee Cho.
Because he was a permanent resident of the USA.
But his nationality was Korean.
Which is the first name?
What is the last name?
My American neighbors do not know the first and last names.
In the USA,
The first name should be followed by the middle name, and followed by the last name.
Why do the Korean people use the last name first?
My American neighbors do not know.
They just call me John.
They just know that I am a Korean, although I came to the USA
More than 30 years ago.
They know the killer was a Korean man.
Later, they came to know he happened to be a Korean man.
Later, they came to know he happened to be a mad man.
April
Cherry flower petals falling down
Like white butterflies
Land softly and cover the green grass.
Then, real butterflies coming down from the sky
To the Earth
Dance in between magnolia flowers.
It is a beautiful dance festival.
The butterflies are whispering to the flowers:
We are leading the feast.
They are questioning:
Who wrote, “April is cruel!”
Solitude
When you cannot handle solitude,
Walk into the woods and talk to the trees and birds.
Then, the water in the creek will carry your solitude to the sea.
I know solitude is the disease of those who live in the high altitude.
If you still cannot handle solitude,
Communicate with the stars in the night sky.
Then, the most shining star which looks like the chrysanthemum,
Hyacinth or the firework in the summer night’s dream
Will present you one beautiful poem
No one can write.
That poem will cure your solitude.
On Time
Love begins when the flower blooms, and
Ends when the flower fades.
Love runs into morning glory, the high noon, sunset, twilight,
And plunges into the darkness.
Flower is a house accepting climbers’ echo, birds’ song;
lovers’ kisses, their chat, laughs, sorrow and ecstasy;
Free air, wind, water; second, minute, hour, month, year; and
Spring, summer, autumn, winter; dew, rain, and snow.
Without hope, a wayfarer inside the hope
Like the moon passing by the clouds,
Or like the clouds passing by the moon,
Walks into the classic poetry
And sleeps on the bed.
Dream is the compensation to the wayfarer
After his long journey.
While he is sleeping,
A baby is born; a girl becomes a maiden;
A body becomes a lad.
They fall in love,
Marry,
Get old
And die.
They are buried in the galaxy.
They become the two stars in a close distance.
While he is sleeping,
The morning glory is opening and closing its flower petals, and
The moon-greeting flower is opening and closing its petals.
Surfer
Born on a wing of wax and fiberglass
Out of a sunrise born of foam and spray,
He skims across the brightness of the day
And glides to shore where dream and twilight pass.
The whole of life is king of mountain play
Where challengers consist of wind and wave,
Where every ocean creature is a slave
And every swell and crest a royal way.
His poise, a carving on some ocean cave,
Maintaining art and balance evermore,
Where board and surfer never reach the shore
But glide in winds that sigh or rave.
Gray gull, dethroned, behold your rival race,
Surpassing even you in flight and grace.
|
|
|
By Yearn Hong Choi
Our sea lost its name
Into the waves of Japanese imperialism
At the turn of the century,
After we lost our own names.
But the Japanese imperialists are defending the
Sea of Japan
With Matteo Ricci and other mapmakers.
They don't want to know the historical facts,
"East Sea emerged 600 years before Japan emerged in the world."
They don't want to see many ancient maps showing
East Sea, Oriental Sea, Joseon Sea, and Korea Sea.
Listen, the Japanese imperialists!
The sea is our commons.
Do you know the tragedy of the commons?
The sea makes the Earth beautiful,
Living, Green and Blue.
Do you see the Earth
As we see?
We don't claim an exclusive use of East Sea
Over the Sea of Japan.
We are humbly asking for the dual name of East Sea/Sea of Japan
Or Sea of Japan/East Sea
On the waters in between Japan and Korea.
A shared sea should keep a shared name.
Don't you think so?
My fellow human beings,
You use your cognitive power.
You use your reasoning power
To change the ugly course of history
From the Imperialism into the peaceful sailing
Of our blue sea.
What's our lives for?
We should search for the beauty of justice-as-fairness
For the humankind
And for the sea.
|
|
|
The following is a poem by Choi Yearn-hong to Japanese friends.
1
Don't try to steal the lonely island,
Because it is lonely in the vast blue sea.
It has been owned by the Korean people over 1,500 years.
Two-peak or three-peak looking islets were once the islands
For the seals.
So they named the islets Three-Peak Islands and Seal's Island
Over the years.
Your Tokugawa Government made a wise ruling over the islets
After it inquired about the distance between Ullung Island to Dokdo
And Oki to Dokdo: They belong to Korea, or Joseon in the 17th century.
Don't try to hide your own history of decency and justice.
The Meiji Restoration by Satusma and Chosu samurai modernized
Your country, then colonized Korea and staged the Pacific War.
Then, two atomic bombs forced your Emperor to surrender and
Brought Liberation to Korea.
But your invitation of Russia at the ending of the Pacific War
Made Korea divided, even now.
You don't seem guilty of your 40 years' colonial rule
In the most critical time of the 20th century.
Be ashamed!
Try to restore East Sea on the water between Japan and Korea,
And Dokdo from Liancourt Rocks or Takeshima in all maps
And persuade the world with history:
Tell them the Sea of Japan should be shared with the East Sea in their maps, and
Tell them Dokdo was the legitimate single name.
White waves from the blue sea will cleanse your conscience and a sense of justice:
Without confession of crime, human history cannot make progress.
2
The fishing boats could anchor at Dokdo in the stormy sea.
Some currents moved the fishing boats to Dokdo
Before they reached Ulnungdo from the coastline,
So that the innocent fisherman once placed Dokdo in between the coast and Ulnungdo.
They were not scientific enough in the 17th century.
Dokdo was generous and hospitable to the fishermen from Oki.
But don't steal Dokdo from Korea.
East Sea is not just the Sea on the East:
It is the name of renewed hope every dawn with the Sunrise
To all Korean people.
It is the hope and inspiration of 70 million Korean people
And the hope and inspiration of peace on Earth and Sea.
|
|
Eodo
Eodo is the last port of call
All fishermen visit
And their boats anchor in.
At the end of the sea,
There is Eodo.
It is Utopia, next world of Cheju people.
Their dream is surfing on high white waves
Accompanied by the seagulls
Attracting schools of fish and harvesting them.
Eodo is only one island
Which does not appear on any maps
In the world.
So no one can steal it from Cheju people.
It is a secret island.
Eodo is the last port of call
All fishermen visit
And their boats anchor in.
White Deer Lake
The legendary story of white deer playing with a saint
Has been long hidden by fog or foggy rain.
The mysterious lake revealed
Under sunshine,
After the foggy rain in one summer afternoon was gone
On my fifth trip to Mt. Halla.
I could see the lake from the peak of the mountain:
How fortunate I was!
Fog in the crater was suddenly removed
At 2 in the afternoon.
Water in the bottom of the lake was good enough
For the deer and the saint to drink.
I suddenly see the lake
A beautiful nude of Venus
On the sea shell.
All precious things hidden by the bridal veil and
Emerges briefly to please the naked eyes
Of the poet.
*White Deer Lake was located at the peak of Mt. Halla, the highest mountain in South Korea, 1950-meter from sea level.
Share
Print
Save
Follow
