These poems have been drawn from the translation portfolio in the May/June issue of the American Reader, available here. They were translated from Korean by Chae-Pyong Song and Darcy L. Brandel.
First
by Hwang Byeong-seung
The boy
In and out
Hesitant
Like a rat head
That inspects the outside of its hole
What good are the legs?
The girl
Waits
Like the rat’s daughter-in-law
Lying flat on her face under the floor covering
Tick Tock Tick Tock
The sound of the clock’s second hand
Comes and goes
Like a ping pong ball
Punching their heads in turns.
✖
A Brief Nap
by Moon Tae-jun
When I wake from a nap
I become a tree that has seen flowers off
Several times even in one day
The spirit is abandoned in an unfamiliar place
Today I have dreamt again of frightened roe going backwards
Dream, a distancing dream of the day
Like a sister prone to tears who returns after visiting her mother
Waking from a nap I rinse my mouth with cold water,
I hear a pheasant crying in faraway vines, my fist clenched tight
In the afternoon I stand like a hollow tree
✖
The Ibis
by Moon Tae-jun
Stepping in the mountain shadow on the rice paddy
the old ibis
stands still
A deep thought lingers on her body and passes
Like I once stared at an empty pond vacantly
Is this how loneliness lingers?
It was the evening when the mountain shadow fully wetted her ankles