Snowscape, and: Winter Mountain, and: The Holy Family, and: A Steel Idea, and: Cataclysmic Love, and: One Day I’ll Be Sitting in a Murky Wine House
- Snowscape, and: Winter Mountain, and: The Holy Family, and: A Steel Idea, and: Cataclysmic Love, and: One Day I’ll Be Sitting in a Murky Wine House
Snowscape
Day breaks: the snow has stopped. The world I left behind, all pain consummated, is covered by a shroud. The snowfield tells me: death can be a purification, growing old a value. I’m a survivor; I load my long shadow onto the snow. [End Page 109]
Winter Mountain
In this world, we’re all on rent; Pain is a sort of monthly payment. In fact, in this world, the opportunists are more distressed; all those considerations!
Better get home quick! [End Page 110]
The Holy Family
The head of the household rented a basement room, lit a coal briquette, brought his family there. In the face of life’s exigencies, I would like to flow long, to drain, like the Jordan. The house is like the inside of a coffin: I’m buried here with wife and kids; their faces show nothing. [End Page 111]
A Steel Idea
Birthing the JCB was a stroke of genius like the dragonfly birthing the helicopter, or the helmet crab birthing the robot. A steel idea, the shovel arm tosser of yellow dust eats hurriedly into a green hill; sometimes it digs a grave for a person to go into. [End Page 112]
Cataclysmic Love
Buckled in embrace they were when the lava poured down on their heads; death melted therein. In the stones of Pompeii a desperate love surceased their naked lives; the veins stood in their necks.
It was cold today; I wanted to wait for you at the terminal, to enter the ice with you— if we have aught left of body heat— and buckled in embrace, to throw this warm robe over a cataclysmic love wherein your foul parts become mine. [End Page 113]
One Day I’ll Be Sitting in a Murky Wine House
My daughter has just gotten her first period. Can’t take her in my arms any more! What a grim existence! Can’t steal a look at her diary! I came out of my child’s room with its photograph of piercing, famished African eyes and a line under the poster to show what the family has contributed. And I walked about outside. Outside. I always feel people are watching me; I’ve been avoiding people since I don’t know when. I want life scattered on the floor like clothes fallen from a hanger. I’m trapped in a bloated skin bag, so grotesque it’s unbearable. Misery is really the pits!
So one day I’ll be sitting alone in a murky wine house, dressed in my ancient, comfortable-grown skin bag, listening disinterestedly to the noisy smalltalk behind my back, a vacant stare directed regretfully at the wine level in my glass.
The problem: Will I be able to put up with this beautifully banjaxed me? [End Page 114]
Born in South Chŏlla, Hwang Chiu (1952-) is a poet with social and political awareness that is strikingly different from that of most of his contemporaries; he uses startling imagery in a satirical analysis of contemporary society.
Kevin O’Rourke, professor emeritus (Kyung Hee University), has published many translations of classical and contemporary Korean literature including Looking for the Cow (Dedalus, 1999), The Book of Korean Shijo (Harvard, 2002), The Book of Korean Poetry: Songs of Shilla and Koryo (Iowa University Press, 2006), The Book of Korean Poetry: Choson Dynasty (Stallion Press, 2014), and Selected Poems of Kim Sakkat (Koryo Press, 2014), as well as a personal memoir, My Korea: Forty Years without a Horsehair Hat (Renaissance Books, 2013).
