55th Modern Korean Literature Translation Awards Poetry Commendation Award: Butterfly's Dream
Cover of Shin Kyeong-nim's poetry collection, which includes "Butterfly's Dream" / Courtesy of Changbi Publishers
Written by Shin Kyeong-nim
Translated by Shane Ingan and Lee Jeong-ju
Butterfly’s Dream
For 40 years, half a lifetime,
I lived life as a butterfly.
Fluttering over barbed-wire fences,
Past my mother in her little back room
Stitching and sewing on into the night,
To the edge of the yard, where, long ago,
Clinging to my big sister’s back,
The two of us used to play hopscotch,
I landed on the clothesline to rest…
Drifting through the sharp stench of compost
Freshly turned over by the school’s back gate,
I heard the children of grade two
Reading aloud from their language books,
A sound like the buzzing of bees…
Now, not a day goes by that I don’t find myself wondering,
Am I not right now dreaming?
How could I, a butterfly,
End up here, 40 years spent squatting at this stall,
Half a lifetime, selling roasted potatoes?
Am I not dreaming?
Short thoughts in early spring
-In Yeonghae
The wind rides ocean waves a thousand miles
Rattles and dances through the old pine forest
As I have walked a hundred miles
Over hills and valleys to arrive
At this sandy shore, to lie down
Drunk on this small beauty
Nowhere left to go
A summer day
-in Macheon
While I was dozing in the back of the bus
We must have passed through a rainstorm,
And the bus, hesitant before the surging floodwater,
Slowed to a stop on the outskirts of town.
By the side of road, wading through the frosty water
A young woman pulls up her dress, revealing her white thighs.
Rinsed with rain, the dangling tassles of a willow tree
Give off a musky, somewhat earthy scent.
Jeongseon Arirang
-To the singer Kim Byeong-ha of Jeongseon
With us, the creator strikes no bargains:
Scenic panoramas, towering peaks
And clear mountains streams that dazzle the eye
In exchange for these steep stony fields
And hard rain-fed paddies.
And so, clinging to the foot of this mountain
Crowded round this trickling little creek
We scratch a living.
And because fear is all we know
Because fear is the life that we’ve been given
While cutting hay or weeding fields
We drown our sorrows in song:
Keop-jaeng-i-ra / i-reu-ji mal-la
Eo-ri-seok-da / mal-ha-ji mal-la*
*Do not call us cowards
Do not say that we are fools
Mountain lass
-To the mountain hermit of Namwon, Li Young-sil
Chunhyang fell in love with Mount Jiri,
And so she came here to live.
Not for Lee Doryeong would she lead a life of tears.
Whenever she thinks of that man who,
Determined to become a government spy,
Up and left one day on an airplane,
She locks up her shop and climbs the mountain.
Whoever she meets on the trails that day
She takes as a lover.
But don’t get any ideas.
Her arms and legs are as strong as any man’s,
Her heart as hard as the boulders of this mountain
And as tough as the gnarled maples
Clinging to these rugged peaks.
Autumn rain
A wet leaf pins itself to the window of the train station, where,
Though the train is pulling into the station now, I am alone.
Hidden in the shade of a plane tree, the old wooden tea house.
Inside, a girl carries a tray of tea. I bet her hair smells like grass.
Tonight when I get home, I’ll fire up the old stove,
And treat myself to a hot cup of tea.
The rain-soaked melody of a pop song gradually gives way
To the clatter of train cars rounding the hill.
The old station master lurches to the platform
And languidly waves his tattered flag.
Splattering upon his slumped shoulders, autumn rain–
Naeweon-dong
-On Juwang Mountain
That hidden village in the valley,
That place at the end of the stream
That our grandfathers used to call paradise, is a lie.
Pulled down and abandoned, bleak and in disarray
The very stones of its foundation now
Just barely visible beneath a field of reeds.
The wind that strikes our backs
Wails and moans.
They tell me my hometown is in no better state,
That try as we might to calm it, this wind
Heedlessly sweeps across the land.