53rd Modern Korean Literature Translation Awards Poetry Grand Prize: Everlasting Snow
Cover of Jeong Han-ah's poetry collection "A Mature Kiss," which includes “Everlasting Snow” / Courtesy of Munhakdongne
Written by Jeong Han-ah
Translated by Gene Png
Everlasting Snow
― The things your eight-year-old hands could do
That winter, the list of ways you kept yourself amused:
Mourned Patrasche and made a windmill out of an empty milk carton + two leftover skewer sticks + a single chopstick + a thumbtack
Decorated the Christmas tree with chains made of countless interlocking paper rings of silver, gold, and every color
Tossed a handful of rice on the landlord's snow-covered courtyard, propping up a straw basket with a stick, setting up a sparrow trap
Felt oh-so-proud of yourself
Perched on every branch of the jujube tree, the sparrows do not go under your basket, instead they only chuckle-chuckle-chuckle.
Behind the tree, the sun casts its shine-shine-shine,
it's early in the morning, and Eungyeong, the daughter from the shop across the street, runs to tell you that the chick you said was cute a while ago, the one you said you'd keep for just one night, the one you've been feeding earthworms to since the spring, the one whose bold crest was starting to come in, the one who felt like a brother to you, has frozen to death.
With a swipe, Eungyeong's father and her younger brother, Byeongchan, wipe the grease from their lips.
It sure looks like they've had young chicken soup.
Because betrayal is dangerous while suspicion is one's freedom,
you can't bear to pull your hand away ― a sharpened knife
holding onto the end of a thread ― and so it freezes blue.
The windmill that you made doesn't spin despite the breeze.
(Though it always does when you spin it yourself
― how nifty is it to be able to spin something when you feel like it?)
The snow that falls and the snow that goes away in Bethlehem
(and therefore, the eyes on the roads to and fro)
must've never been there at all.
From now on, it is never-melting cotton balls
that sit atop the Christmas palm tree, disguised as everlasting snow.
(Oh, sparrows. Laugh to your heart's content.
For when you clever birdbrains are shoved under a basket,
these bastards with families will seize
the lot of you and cook you right up.)
Buurp
, you belch to say you're full, and force a loud laugh,
but that day, you write your own diary entry for the very first time:
“My chicky has died. Eungyeong's father must've killed him. Eungyeong's mother must've boiled him up. And Eungyeong's mother and father and Byeongchan must've eaten him. Eungyeong must've had no choice but to eat him. This world will fall to ruins one day. As for Eungyeong, I'll forgive her.”
Still inside your desk, the morning glory seeds from the last summer harvest go
Too-too-toot, too-too-toot
, with their clenched fists.
, dreaming of trumpet shapes perhaps.
Never knowing if they'll become something or won't,
kept in the darkest dark.
The Romance of a Skeptical Carnivore
Because her heart beats for too long,
her love always ends up buried alive.
A plethora of neglected weeds grow
on the mounds and mounds of graves in her chest.
A red cry.
Like the flawed prayer
of the tiger who fell onto the sorghum field,
the tiger who never dies despite his falls.
Just one more tteok
and he might become sweeter, she thought.
(The tteok was made of sorghum, good for the heart.)
there lives in her chest a tiger that keeps on falling.
With all twenty claws, he buries himself.
Can tigers live on nothing but tteok?
A full stomach ― is that love?
The tiger wanted to devour
the core of your heart,
Dearest Sun and Dearest Moon.
Now, what's wrong with that?
Uncertainties Regarding the Future of Snow White who has Survived
My French teacher in high school was awfully beautiful.
With the smallest, fairest face, largest eyes, hair like ebony, blood-red lips, and the body of a Barbie doll, Oh, she's my Snow White!
When she read from the textbook, oh how her round, rolling cadences put me under a spell.
After I graduated, I ran into her in front of the school. There was a blue bruise on her beautiful face, blooming like a pansy.
Comment allez-vous? (I heard you got married?)
So it follows that the ending of Snow White must be rewritten as such:
Princess! Oh, you're alive. What a dream come true! Such beauty, I must take you back to the palace.
……
Please, you don't have to. For after three years,
my face as white as snow will look pallid to you now.
The dark of my ebony hair will depress you now.
Surely, you'll pry, and ask how these blood-red lips have spent all this time, doing who-knows-what with seven dwarves.
Are you curious to know what I gave the hunter in exchange for my life?
My sympathy that disregarded earnest cautions against strangers,
that let in the pitiful hag thrice,
I suppose you think it a penchant for temptation.
You only loved me because I was dead.
If I had gone around crying, laughing, talking, you would've quaked in your boots.
When each time, the mirror she keeps under her pillow answers, “Snow White is the fairest of them all,” I wonder how badly my stepmother's heart ripped.
I bet you wish I were lying dead and quiet in my glass coffin now.
This face as white as snow, hair as dark as ebony, and lips as red as blood, are curses cast upon me!
She picks up the apple she had spat out, dusts the dirt off it, and takes a large bite. Quietly, she closes her eyes. The seven dwarves wail as they beat their fists on the ground, they wrestle the prince down, and gouge his eyes out. Love is blind. (Go ask your mother what that means)
Wandering Star
Feeling weightless, the brave stars,
in a matter of time,
leave the dirty house they've grown fond of.
The village casts its black shadow,
while cloaked in dusk, clusters of waxen azaleas
glow savagely like the teeth of wild beasts
on this wicked spring night.
The soft kiss that was shared only once,
the slight shiver felt between two holding hands,
and the single name, loved many years ago (my goodness)
are now the crushed leaves of yesteryear.
The crescent moon is impaled on a lightning rod,
and we light and share a last cigarette on the roof
while millions of lightyears away, the stars roar in laughter;
Today, as always, is the last we'll have,
so go where you have to, dear brothers.
Return from afar, dirty love.