In Houyhnhnmland¹

Books soaked in the wine of his blood

Nakba in Arabic—

Shoah in Hebrew—

The somehow beautiful shape of the lips around such words

Through the TV’s Hubble telescope,

We can see at the end of space another world’s children dying

If we don’t cover our eyes, if we don’t turn from the sight

We can always watch death

Close by as well

We can just imagine—it’s so far away

Oh, so that’s what happened

Falling like the apple on a crisp autumn day several centuries ago,

The heart pierced the apple atop the head

White phosphorous came soaring like the strapping young archer's silver arrow

Everything is like that, from a distance

A warm campfire, the burning city

Up in the sky

Like the long-vanished stars, the screams twinkle

—from the 2024 Seoul International Book Fair limited edition collection Houyhnhnm

[1] The fictional idealistic society appearing in part four of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels.

Concentrate

On the blue birds momentarily blossoming in the big cherry tree

On the ring finger I let slip away on the first day,

Washing between legs of love and fins of hate

Concentrate on those marching, snuffing out the fragrant candles of despair set in a long row

The hair soaked in warm blood flowing down the forehead

On my bumbling song

The faintest light is as fast as the most brilliant

—from Yusim (Summer 2024)

Someday, After You

You know what my student said to me in class?

We sit in the chair of being,

Soon to stand and offer the seat—not to death, no—

To the glistening purple bacteria you can see all around you

Even without a microscope,

To the floating debris pushed aside as yellow canoes slice the water’s flesh,

The scientist to the element they discovered on the periodic table,

The gardener to the humus and the sprouting green,

The poet to the newborn child’s tiny voice box, with its first cry

The starlight to the darkness gasping down the exploding dust,

The red lips of existence to the white breast of nothingness,

Being to time

Offers up its seat.

Like the patients

Sitting all afternoon in the waiting room’s

Folding chairs

Hearing the nurse call their name

And thinking Finally! My turn

As they pass through the doors, offering nothing

Finally, your turn

The soul, like a diligent guardian, goes in after the body.

—from Yusim (Summer 2024)

Open

—after The Metamorphoses

Ovid spoke to the people in the square

Like a father to a son

“The heavens are lain open. There we shall find our way out.”

That night he came back and wrote in his diary

Like a person whispering advice in his ear

Death is lain open. There we shall find our way out.

A waft of olive scent through the window when it opens—

The crumbs of infinity

Whisk into the poet’s nostrils

He whispers to you, lying at his side like a burnt-out flame

Sadness is lain open. There we—

Like our lungs, the universe swelling

—from Yusim (Summer 2024)

The Pianist of Fate

It feels like you’re pressing down on the keys of my black and white keyboard

Leftover snow on a muddy road, where I can almost hear a faint, drawn-out pain

Inside the spring tree trunk, green hammers bust open the sluggish heart

I think my soul has already vanished, like the ice in a whiskey glass

Morning came each and every day, black feathers plucked from its bright naked body

—from Yusim (Summer 2024)

There is Paper

Do you see nothing 

watching you from under the water?

—Margaret Atwood, “At the Tourist Centre in Boston”

Square-finned orange can be kept

In the vast blue tank.

From the paper’s perspective

Mark Rothko was a fisher of colors.

It is deeper than the sea.

All the colors of the depths live there.

Reality can best be described on its surface

Because paper is thin,

Because reality crumples like fantasy

In the massive hand of god, waking with a start from a doze.

Thin, so as to realize god’s plan

For the universe to burn up like an old book

In a great conflagration.

A most disappointing creation.

Always eating and drinking, love burning with abandon

White ash scattering in the empty mouth of the wind—

The weather on the surface is so cold.

Take a finger

                             to the paper

Punch a hole the shape of a flame, punch a hole!

What’s there, on the other side?

                 A                person

Warming their hands on a fresh urn

Writing about the heat of the things turned to ash.

A vaguely shining distinctness

Hanging from a square corner—a long icicle

Dripping down the ice candlestick

Tears of wax

Thawing and freezing

From the hesitant, unknowable atmosphere

Crumpled paper, the salt of midnight

Falls

Like a snowy morning

                                                on the first sea

                   forever blue

—from Littor (Summer 2022)

Mom

Going to see my mother is like paying taxes. Was raising me like paying taxes for her? I won’t ask. She’ll say it felt like giving alms, her whole body trembling with devotion. When I look up at the autumn sky, where her beloved god lives, the blueness rings like a bell in my eyes. I searched once for any leftover trace of my mother’s love, a black bee in amber. I gave up quickly. I wasn’t a paleontologist. The bees and flowers must’ve been there somewhere. What I am is a delinquent filer.

—from Littor (Summer 2022)

The Truth

It’s true the stillness flows over the unmoving stars on the surface of the water

It’s true there was a child who fell in the water

It’s true, this very night, the child still skips safely across the hearts of loved ones

Like steppingstones across the water

My classmate who drowned at the stone bridge by Hanyang University was so nice, in truth

She let me borrow her sky-blue colored pencil the day before

Is it true there’s always so much we can never give back to the dead?

Truthfully, I tend to forget things

There must also be so much we never got to say

Like the reason why song wanders here and there

Like the reason why that person had to die

Like why the reason is like a wandering song

Though we could also tell the truth

They say my classmate was pulled from the water with her mouth shut tight

It can’t be spoken

The truth she meant to tell

We each kissed the long arm of darkness and whispered

The living, the dead, the truth

—from I Love You Like an Old Street (Moonji, 2022)

Feels Right for You

The blood-soaked afternoon feels right for you

The trumpet of a dead tree

Blares golden noise into the wind

This hope feels right for you

A hope crumbling like a white egg in vinegar

February feels right for you

A sadness one or two days short

Saturday feels right for you

One spent waiting for someone on a crumbling bench

A white face wavering before a flame feels right for you

The face of a mermaid who knows darkness and light

Among quiet dogs and sleeping feathers

At the bar late at night, I search for the lost line of poetry that feels right for you

I feel right for you

Hand in hand we swim through darkness and walk through light

For your hands, sweet and sticky mangos feel right

For your soul, a night overflowing with scissors cutting through oblivion

For you, childhood secrets

For you, an empty bird cage

Birds soaring through the blood-soaked afternoon sky

—from I Love You Like an Old Street (Moonji, 2022)

A Field of Red Four-leaf Clover

                                                                munched on by rabbits

                In the sea a ship bigger than the sea

               Time barks in the visage of a wrinkled white dog as I pass by

               The unknown town’s main artery has been severed again it seems

               In the spurting blood, a giant goddess washes her dress clean

               Every day it’s like this damn world is trying to kill itself

               No matter how much you try to stop it, it won’t listen

               Paper is a handkerchief—barely a handsbreadth of peace

               Paper is the face of god—a god without a hope of saving the world

               A third-rate god, a god who’s always been a screw-up

               Grandma stroked my face with her hands rough as toes

               Can I be hopeless even though I’m old?

               Can I be hopeless till the day I die?

               I asked out the train window

               Beating on the black box car after car

               The train’s wheels screech, letting out a grinding sob

               Like most things that come to a stop, it’s sad

—from I Love You Like an Old Street (Moonji, 2022)

Translated by Seth Chandler