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