Mania from menos
the spirit or the mind
the elevation of the senses
the cultivation of imaginations
with 4 shades of madness:
Religious fervor in Dionysians
Poetic possession by the Muses
Erotic obsession by Aphrodite
Pythias’s inspiration from Apollo.
Thus is spoken.
Where I am from
No one cares,
But who cares
When a country
Whose borne
We’re all wayfarers
To the terra incognita
Where journeys end
By the Five Rivers.
She walks toward the end
An inch closer, eyes closed;
Then one leap into the air
She vanishes into the water
Where no fate can stalk her
Care about the world no more
But the king and the lotus flower
To forget the memories forever.
*Author’s Note: This poem is based on the Korean folktale of Shimchung about a girl who throws herself into the sea for 300 sacks of rice to be offered to Buddha so that her blind father can regain his eyesight. The Sea Emperor sends her back to land in lotus flower, and her father can see. Contrary to the popular perception of the story as extolling the virtue of the daughter’s filial piety toward her blind old father, I see it more as the girl’s good-heartedness that touches upon the universal heart.
The golden curtain is drawn
After Helios’s chariot is gone;
The pale hues of passion shine
In the sweet soft twilight;
The Hesperides open heaven
with the golden apples bright;
Selena rides in the moon chariot
Hecate waits at the crossroads;
I search for my star spirited away
into the world of gods till dusk to dawn.
Flame, Glass and Ink are Poems, essays, and reading notes by Stefania Joori Suh 
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