Mysterious Wealth
Ku Sang (1919- )
Translated from the Korean by Brother Anthony of Taizé
 
Feeling today like the Prodigal Son
just arrived back in his father’s arms,
I observe the world and all it contains.
 
June’s milky sky glimpsed through a window,
the sunlight dancing over fresh green leaves,
clusters of sparrows that scatter, chirping,
full-blown petunias in pots on verandas,
all strike me as infinitely new,
astonishing and miraculous.
 
My grandson, too, rushing round the living-room
and chattering away for all he’s worth,
my wife, with her glasses on,
embroidering a pillow-case,
and the neighbors, each with their particularities,
coming and going in the lane below,
all are extremely lovable,
most trustworthy, significant.
 
Oh, mysterious, immeasurable wealth!
Not to be compared with storeroom riches!
Truly, all that belongs to my Father in Heaven,
all, all is mine!
 
 
This week, we’re reading a poem by Korean poet Ku Sang.
 
Ku Sang was born in Seoul, Korea, in 1919, and died there in 2005 at the age of 84. He is among Korea’s best-known poets. Ku Sang was born into a deeply Catholic family (his brother became a priest) but Ku himself left the practice of his faith as a young man, finding his way back to his Catholic roots only later in life.
 
Ku wrote poetry from an early age. It has been said that Ku Sang “rejects both an artistic sensibility that lacks spiritual depth and a crude intellect that lacks a historical consciousness.” For Ku, as for so many of the poets we’ve read in this series, poetry is not an escape into a world of fantasy, but a clearer way of looking at the world as it really is. His poems deal with questions of faith, war, and peace, and an array of social justice issues, including care for the environment. It’s no surprise that it was not only Ku’s journalism but his poetry that got him in trouble with Communist authorities after World War II!
 
The poem Scott read, “Mysterious Wealth,” is typical of Ku’s poetry in the directness of the language, and in the way it builds on simple and relatable experiences, to a transcendent conclusion.
 
“I observe the world and all it contains,” the poet says at the beginning of the poem – quite a grand statement, isn’t it? To “observe the world and all it contains” is to see not as human beings see, but as God sees. And what does the poet see in this moment of insight? The “milky sky” of June through the window, sunlight on leaves, sparrows chirping, petunias—pleasant but quite ordinary things on an early summer day. And yet, “all strike me as infinitely new, / astonishing and miraculous.”
 
This transformation of the ordinary extends to the people that inhabit this world with him. He sees them in great detail: “My grandson… rushing round the living room… my wife, with her glasses on, embroidering a pillow-case.” The neighbors “coming and going in the lane below,” are not a homogenous group, but individuals:  “each with their particularities.” Seeing as God sees, the poet recognizes that “all are extremely lovable, / most trustworthy, significant.” This is how God sees us: not as a crowd, but as unique, lovable, and “significant”—every one of us.
 
The last stanza is a burst of joy. “Oh, mysterious, immeasurable wealth! / Not to be compared with storeroom riches! / Truly, all that belongs to my Father in Heaven, / all, all is mine!” The imagery here (and in the poem’s title) comes from the 13th chapter of Matthew’s Gospel. “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure buried in a field, which a person finds and hides again, and out of joy goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.” This is indeed “mysterious wealth,” found, yet hidden, worth trading everything for. In the last stanza, Ku Sang sounds very much like the person in that parable of Jesus: “Truly, all that belongs to my Father in Heaven, / all, all is mine!”
 
How is it that the poet sees the world in this way? How is it that he is able to look through God’s eyes? I think the answer lies in the first stanza of the poem. “Feeling today like the Prodigal Son / just arrived back in his father’s arms, / I observe the world and all it contains.” The poet sees the beauty in everything—the world and the people around him—because he himself is “in his father’s arms,” like the Prodigal Son. Perspective is everything, and the poet looks at the world from vantage point of a loved, forgiven child, safe in the arms of the father. He looks through the lens of God’s mercy. And through that lens, everything is new, astonishing, miraculous, lovable, trustworthy, significant.
 
Ku Sang’s wonderful poem reminds me of Thomas Merton’s famous epiphany at the corner of Fourth and Walnut in Louisville, Kentucky. Standing on an ordinary street corner amid people just going about their day, Merton wrote, “it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed.”