Jeong Ho-seung's poem (29)

The Sea’s Saints

Translated by Brother Anthony and Susan Hwang

Now I realize: the dried fish I tore apart

to accompany my drinks is mummified pollock;

the Andong salt mackerel I’ve so far enjoyed,

and the crispy dried anchovies are

mummified mackerel, mummified anchovies.

While I’ve been rushing on through life,

unable to distinguish money and men,

I could not see the sea thrown up by anchovies,

nor hear the waves vomited up by mackerels.

Now I realize: the reason why there are

no more saints emerging among men

is that those are the sea’s very saints.

Just as the bodies of Catholic saints are sometimes found to have remained intact after death and are enshrined visibly in churches as expressions of the holiness they embodied while alive, so the dried and preserved bodies of dead fish communicate the spirit of the sea.