Poetry Commendation Prize: Fifty Meters
Written by Heo Yeon and translated by Yoo Ji-young, Clarque Brown. Below is an excerpt of the winning translation. ― ED
Heo Yeon's poetry book "Fifty Meters" / Courtesy of Moonji Publishing Co.
Fifty Meters
A poor-hearted man lives as a boy and contracts everlasting longing
Not even fifty meters had I gone before I remembered you. My regret couldn't wait for fifty meters to pass and managed to restore you. Rumor has it that one can be so blessed as to forget just by turning away, but I was given no such blessing. Unblessed, in less than fifty meters, I began thinking of all that remained as feelings of guilt. What could I have done to brush aside my longing? Those fifty meters, no more than a stone's throw, are far from undemanding to an addict. I, standing like a still frame, ached for you. Days continued―days when moving beyond fifty meters without pause felt like a greater struggle than living a life of penance. Several times I froze in the street, in the dramatic pose of a wax figure. As if expanding equations to remove a couple of parentheses, I strenuously tightened my brow and hammered my head with my fist. No matter how much I yearned to forget, not a day passed by without longing. Amid any calamity, you remained insanely dazzling and painful.
I hope to let you go when the time comes, in the street full of stonecrop flowers in bloom
A Package from the Tropic of Cancer
As I was gazing out at a fall of watery snow
Long overdue,
And at the momentous show of snowflakes,
The thought came that at some point
This chair I was sitting on now
Might have been a wintry snow-covered tree
Just like that, memories,
In a place so different,
In a way so distinct become souls;
So I thought pointlessly
The package you
Must have mailed long ago
From a tropical country
Somewhere south of the Tropic of Cancer
Arrived only then
I wept
Even before unwrapping the package
For tears sense all before anything else
Written on it
Were memories catastrophically passed
Even when white oblivion overtakes you, I will wait, standing and holding a small bottle of poison―a poison deep blue in color―so that you won't forget me, as such a thing wasn't possible for me
Shuddering on and on
The white snowflakes
Were dying like memories
Of Restless Blood
Staring at something falling from the sky
Is like pining for a faraway country,
And thus, men of restless blood are overflowing
With songs without singing;
With cries without crying
The night―not short-lived, heavy with snowfall
Please, please forgive me
To the snow piling up slowly on the heart,
The snow piling up like a ripple,
The snow blowing all the way to a refuge,
I beg you to forgive me
To the snow over the tiny grave of an infant,
To the snow on the back of a weary brown-eared bulbul,
I hope you will not punish me
Because the bloodline that feels restless over heavy snowfall
Is of insomniac blood
Tonight it snows all night,
And whether asleep or dead,
Forgiveness was not any nearer