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Two Poems by Sin Yong-Mok scrap
by Sin Yong-Mok
Translated by Jack Saebyok Jung
December 4, 2024
Author Bio 작가 소개
Sin Yong-Mok
Without Knowing When
I speak to my son
about warmth. About lap blankets, about hats, about grassy fields, about summer forests swaying in the wind, and about the summer,
through which, if no one had loved, there wouldn’t have been
the arrival of this
autumn. If autumn has arrived, then through the summer, someone
must have loved—
spreading lap blankets on grassy fields that stretch endlessly, wearing hats, facing each other, searching for one another, like the long loneliness that is this
summer. Seeing the same thing in the eyes of the dead in card games and the eyes of the dead in Gaza, like this
summer. Someone loved in the forest, therefore
there are grassy fields,
the wind blows, and
autumn
comes, like the dead in card games dealing the cards again, and the dead in Gaza dying once more, and so
it goes. If no one had missed anyone,
it wouldn’t have arrived—this
winter. And because it has arrived, we light a fire in the house of love, and when we look, the fire is like an autumn forest burning red, like an autumn leaving behind a white winter. And that is when
my son says to me—
though I thought he would speak of cold things—placing the lap blanket over his knees, taking off his hat, extending his palm toward the rising grassy field—
“I can’t believe that hell is a place that burns.”
Because it is so warm, like this—
the red flame-like thing from the skin that cuts in the summery grass field at an unknown time. The autumn-like thing that began inside my body at an unknown time. The heart that left my body empty and white at an unknown time. Without knowing when,
ashes fly,
“Snow falls.” Running to the window. Looking out. Without knowing when,
you are born and grown,
I don’t even know who you are,
whom I parted from, so I miss you.
To One Person
He sat in front of the monitor and spoke
about a person who wanted to become a god to someone else.
I thought, Perhaps that one person never intends to answer anyone’s prayers.
In the windowless room of our appointment, the clock was hung where I couldn’t see it.
I tried
not to look at my cellphone.
On appointed days, I existed briefly within his time.
When he said
again that one person
held a parent’s heart toward someone,
I thought,
Perhaps that one person intends to leave early,
from someone
earnestly calling out for them—
from that voice—somewhere, it felt like leaves were falling—leaves that were the windows of autumn,
from the tree that was the room of autumn.
He said, “It’s all okay,”
but
somewhere, autumn is probably trying
not to look at its cellphone.
I did not try
to read earnestness
on his face,
nor did I try
to recall the day’s tasks falling like leaves from the world’s currents leading to this room and from the monitor.
Like wiping the window of an appointed day,
he said,
“It’s all okay,” but
as soon as I left the appointed room,
I took out my cellphone,
looking at the evening sky turning red, like an autumn leaf hanging from the tip of a distant star’s branch,
so as not to become that one person.
Within our time,
instead of a prayer,
I made a call:
“I’m coming now.”
by Sin Yong-Mok
Translated by Jack Saebyok Jung
Writer 필자 소개
Sin Yong-Mok
Translator 번역가 소개
Jack Saebyok Jung
Jack Saebyok Jung is a 2024 National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellow and the author of Hocus Pocus Bogus Locus (Black Square Editions, 2025). A Truman Capote Fellow at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he co-translated Yi Sang: Selected Works (Wave Books, 2020), winner of the MLA’s Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for a Translation of a Literary Work. His next book of translation, Kim Hyesoon’s Lady No, will be published by Ecco in 2026. He teaches at Davidson College.
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