At the Gobi: Stars and the Life They Illuminate

At the Gobi

*By Shin Kyung-rim*

I came all this way just to see the stars and lay down on the steppe,

yet why, between the stars, do I see the road I walked my whole life?

I see friends who sat gathered at the tavern,

and why do I see tattered clothes and crushed shoes?

I told myself to see nothing but the stars,

not to look at anything more beautiful, not to look at anything more radiant,

only the stars — I came all this way and lay down,

yet why, between the stars, filling the sky between the stars,

do I see the peach blossoms that bloomed hidden behind a wall,

and the red lantern crossing through the mud?

Between the stars, filling the sky between the stars, in the end

why do I see one old man who carelessly lived past eighty,

when I came all this way just to see the stars, and lay down.

You went, didn't you — from a place where there were no stars to see, to a place where only stars are visible. You went to the wild steppe to meet the starlight that civilization had erased. You failed at seeing only the stars, and instead saw the road you had walked. You call it failure, but the stars did what they were meant to do. When you and your friends walked through the mud in the darkness, the stars that served as your compass illuminated your life. They turned each and every footstep you took through hardship after hardship into a constellation.