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  • Prologue for a Flower, and: Ballad Tune VII, and: The Snow Falling on Chagall’s Village, and: Poem on an Autumn Evening, and: Flower
  • Kim Chunsu
    Translated by Kim Jong-Gil (bio)

prologue for a flower

I am a dangerous animal. The moment my hand touches you, you become the unknown darkness.

On the end of the trembling branch of being, you blossom and fall, nameless. I weep throughout the night

and in the unnameable darkness tears overflow, kindling a memory.

My weeping becomes a whirlwind that could topple buildings, and becomes gold light inside a stone.

M y veiled bride! [End Page 134]

ballad tune vii

An apple falls from heaven, landing heavily beside my despairing soul. How prodigal the autumn is; it gives away completely what it tirelessly ripened all summer long! I am more puzzled than ashamed that I have eaten it all myself. But to whom should I give it? I am so small-minded that to you I have given nothing but my five internal organs and six entrails, fishy from the fishy remains of my three meals a day. I have nothing. Each day my fingers tremble, but I haven’t been able to give you even an apple in autumn. The apple given to me, love, to whom shall I give it?

the snow falling on chagall’s village

Snow falls on Chagall’s village. It is March. A man is looking forward to spring, and on his temple a new vein throbs. On the man’s trembling temple, snow comes, with its thousand wings, descending from heaven, covering the roofs and chimneys of Chagall’s village. When snow falls in March the small winter berries of Chagall’s village revive and become green, and in their hearths women make the year’s most beautiful fires. [End Page 135]

poem on an autumn evening

Someone seems to be dying. His half-open eyes refuse to close. Someone seems to be dying this evening.

In this world’s harrowing loneliness, in the days that have rushed by like water, uttering just one name, calling it sorrowfully, someone seems to be dying.

Look how the grief of autumn descends over grasses, trees, hills, cliffs, and finally over the entire earth.

This evening an incomparably innocent life is rushing away somewhere, like water.

flower

Until I spoke his name, he had been no more than a gesture.

But when I spoke his name, he came to me and became a flower.

Now, speak my name, one matching my color and fragrance, as I spoke his name, so that I may go to him and become his flower.

We all wish to become something. You to me and I to you, wish to become an unforgettable gaze. [End Page 136]

Kim Jong-Gil

Kim Jong-gil is one of Korea’s leading twentieth-century poets and a prolific translator of many of the most important contemporary British and American poets into Korean, as well as of many Korean poets into English. His recent books of translation include Among the Flowering Reeds: Classic Korean Poems Written in Chinese. Kim is an emeritus professor of English at Korea University, in Seoul, and a member of the Korean Academy of Arts.

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