51st Korea Times Translation Awards Poetry Grand Prize: 1mg of Anaesthetic
Cover of the 184th "Quarterly Changbi," which includes Choi Jeong-rye's poems / Courtesy of Changbi
Written by Choi Jeong-rye
Translated by Mattho Mandersloot
1mg of Anaesthetic
1mg of anaesthetic put me to sleep
Sending me
Wandering across glaciers
Having to scale an iceberg
Ascending
A mountain of medical waste
1mg was too heavy
Shouldering just 1mg
I struggled to move up
I wanted to shrug it off, that 1mg
It was so heavy
I called my mom, my mom, my late mother
And the wide-open glacier echoed back
Blanket Out the Window
A blanket hangs out the window
Naked in the sun
No patriotism, no treachery
No flag of this or that country
Whether made of cotton or polyester
It's free from all thought, every idea
Our life
Like our innermost feelings
After being criticized
Though it's hard to get the gist
Of criticism voiced in silence
A close-lipped family
Lays bare their hearts
Out their small and shabby room
Hangs a thick blank sheet
Syllogisms
These goats managed to climb a tree
Dangling from its branches like mysterious fruit
Passing by a cottage with goats on the roof
We huffed and puffed for a while
That day we hiked the mountain
Walking and laughing, hand-in-hand
Watching our grown-up children
Each one dangling from their own branch
We wake up to eat breakfast
Drop our spoons without a word
See you later
Off to work
Where we talk to people
Who talk back to us
Watching chauvinist people say chauvinist things on the news
I get worked up like them
They speak in syllogisms
Apartments are made of concrete
Concrete is a mixture of cement, water and gravel
Therefore apartments are made of those three things
Their viewpoints are unchangeable
Vodka is made of potatoes
Potatoes are vegetables
Therefore vodka is salad
As someone might paraphrase them
They say they listen but they don't care what you say
We don't eat to live
We live to eat
As the age-old maxim goes
The goats stay up the tree
Not to eat, I think
Nor to live
If you ask me
They went up
Just to go up
And now they're there
Unable to come down