skip-navigation

한국문학번역원 로고

TOP

Korean Literature Now

Back to Poetry

Person Crafted Out of Water scrap

by Kim Sun-woogo link Translated by Sophie Bowmango link August 4, 2016

Author Bio 작가 소개

김선우

Kim Sun-woo

Kim Sun-woo (b. 1970) is the author of five poetry collections, most recently A Nocturne (2016); four novels, most recently A Prayer: Yoseok and Wonhyo (2015); and several essay collections. She has received the Hyundae Literary Award and the Cheon Sang-byeong Poetry Award. Her books in translation include the collections If My Tongue Refuses to Remain in My Mouth (2018) in English and Unter Pfirsichblüten eingeschlafen (2009) in German.

When that time of month comes near
my body exudes the scent of the sea

From inside a deep well a gyesu tree flows out
and a pair of snails that made love flows out
and curling its wings that will turn to ash a firebird flows out
the feet of all the things which flow out of me
are always imbued a little with the salty scent of the sea

The musk of mother’s body when her lap was a pillow
every night when I could smell only the soft sea brine,
why with such unquenchable thirst the acacias on the low mountain
waved their skeins of white flowers,
why a desert shoal of fish, their green backs sparkling
swam toward me like a waterfall across the night sky

I think I know now, mother is a person crafted out of water
those old stories, how in a year of severe drought
on white cotton the red, menstrual smudge vivid on a rag
was made into a flag, offered up as a rainmaker,
I think I know them now,
making rain with the juices scooped from their insides
my mother’s mother’s mothers’ stories

When that time of month comes near
the moon is filled with the scent of the sea

 

Translated by Sophie Bowman

Writer 필자 소개

Kim Sun-woo

Kim Sun-woo

Kim Sun-woo (b. 1970) is the author of five poetry collections, most recently A Nocturne (2016); four novels, most recently A Prayer: Yoseok and Wonhyo (2015); and several essay collections. She has received the Hyundae Literary Award and the Cheon Sang-byeong Poetry Award. Her books in translation include the collections If My Tongue Refuses to Remain in My Mouth (2018) in English and Unter Pfirsichblüten eingeschlafen (2009) in German.

Translator 번역가 소개

Sophie Bowman

Sophie Bowman

Sophie Bowman is a PhD student in the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Toronto. She has an MA in Korean literature from Ewha Womans University and won the 2015 Korea Times Modern Korean Literature Translation Awards Grand Prize for Poetry. Her translations have appeared in Guernica, Modern Poetry in Translation, and Koreana.

Did you enjoy this article? 별점

Did you enjoy this article? Please rate your experience

Send