57th Modern Korean Literature Translation Awards Poetry Commendation Award: There Was a Fire
Summary
An Hee-yeon’s poems, translated by Park Se-yeon, explore loneliness, sorrow and the persistence of life through images of fire, flour and a summer hill. In “There Was a Fire,” a fire brings people together and continues to resonate after it is extinguished. “Fuss” gives visible form to sorrow, while “What I Learned on the Summer Hill” follows a walk through changing hills and a landscape altered by loss.
Key Facts
- The speaker in “There Was a Fire” lights dry sticks and imagines a fire that allows rather than devours or scorches.
- In “Fuss,” the speaker steps into a square covered in flour and describes growing despite feeling effaced and misshapen.
- In “What I Learned on the Summer Hill,” the hill says the white rabbit has not been seen in a while.
- The poem describes puddles across the hill, a rapid descent into night and a storm that follows stillness.
Cover of An Hee-yeon's poetry collection including "There Was a Fire"
Written by An Hee-yeon
Translated by Park Se-yeon
There Was a Fire
He figured the day had turned chill,
and also felt a bit alone.
Today, I'll light a fire, he thought.
He laid dry sticks together and lit them.
Fire, rise, fire—
he hummed a song,
he dreamed of a fire
that would not hurt,
not a fire that devours but the one that allows,
not a fire that scorches but the one that allows.
Even here, he said, there was a home,
and people arrived one by one.
Once the cold hands came out from their pockets,
that's how stories began—
palm lines crisscrossing, without our noticing.
The sun and the moon tenderly exchanged goodbye,
beyond the fence, the weeds were growing,
a stray dog retrieved its soul, returning home,
while not-yet-born me—
the self that died inside, I lulled and fell asleep.
The fire—extinguished long ago—
but certain things did not cease.
The fire hadn't hushed, not even a little.
Fuss
Covered head to toe in flour, I stepped into the square
to bring my sorrow into view.
Yesterday, I hid my umbrella in my bag and took the rain on,
to proclaim: I do not shatter. I do not disintegrate in the rain.
But my bloated, engorged feet spill out from my boots,
and no one ever asks if I am okay.
To let my secret out, I left my notebook on the bus,
to declare my doorbell was never broken,
I hammered nails into the wall even past midnight.
The seesaw stays tilted.
Alone doesn't work, people say.
I'm the one effaced.
Someone planted the wrong seed, no doubt.
My plan to be beautiful has fallen apart.
Still, I grow—though warped and out of shape.
With every cough, white powder bursts and flutters.
See—this is the color and texture of my soul.
You can touch it. Right here.
Only the long silence feels kind.
Should I quit it all? I whisper—
one drenched dog snaps into a violent spin before my eyes,
a blast of droplets erupting, flying in all directions.
That very dog—as if to say it is alive—
wades into the muddy pool on its own feet, with joy.
What I Learned on the Summer Hill
I walked to completely lose myself.
Wrote hill and believed it to be one.
Then an unexpected hill would unfold.
That day, too, I was walking a hill.
A slope, relatively gentle.
Sunlight, enough.
A joy in being fully blessed.
After a while, a hollow appeared.
I lifted my head to see there were puddles in every direction.
I watched the hill's feeling.
A life, so many puddles.
A summer where the feet sink, sink.
What made you like this?
The hill, close to tears,
said the white rabbit hasn't been seen in a while.
After that came the descent.
Night came fast, too fast to bear.
The hill knew it still had
many rabbits inside—but knew, too,
that after stillness always comes storm,
that summer exists only to burn everything.
Was it the rabbit we lost?
While chasing, as if being chased,
among countless hills,
I wondered why it had to be this one.
Even just the fact of going can fold a stretch of time in half.
Unfold it, and the landscape is no longer the same.
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