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Two Poems by Yoon Eunseong scrap
by Yoon Eunseong
Translated by Jack Saebyok Jung
March 7, 2025
Author Bio 작가 소개
Yoon Eunseong
At the Glass Plaza
Remember?
We learned Music and Earth Science1 on the same day and
went up
to the rooftop together.
When light shone through the clouds, it felt as if
we’d suddenly noticed2 something,
as though we could finely perceive
that soft, drifting time—
like touching the forehead of a cow or a puppy.
Even if all we could do was lie face down and cry, wondering
what it was all for, right on time
we still sat at our desks, sharing a single pair of earphones.
It feels like we already knew this, back then.
In the city where I live, people often gather and scatter in the plaza,
and though I keep trying to speak, somehow
it feels like the prayers we shout from here never quite reach far enough.
Even as we watched the drifting clouds and listened to music together,
we couldn’t fly, realizing
wings aren’t so easily earned.
Instead,
even on the rooftop, we felt
as if we were sinking.
And sometimes,
there were scenes of children, heads bowed over their crowded desks,
knocking on the window in thirst, trying to get outside—
If we felt all that back then,
what more must we feel here and now?
What hopes should we write down as we close out the year and grow older?
My voice briefly echoes
above ground and below, then fades.
Let’s say that holding on and gathering like this
is a quiet prayer, bound by an invisible thread—
a prayer for those who stand with their backs to the future
to turn around.
Let’s say we have gathered here for a moment
to notice the hands that shatter both glass and fog,
bringing outside in.
1 Imagining, through teacher Boran, that a science class could also feel warm.
2 A phrase (“알아채다”) learned from conversations with Hyerin, who is active in the animal liberation movement.
From Unknown Things
I had a good dream.
I don’t know how to say it exactly.
Every morning, the shadow I still carry stays bunched up,
refusing to emerge from the deep forest beneath my skin.
So I go out by finding any shadow I can and fastening it to myself.
Kind people lend me their shadows;
sometimes they even send me shadows as gifts.
Today, I got one from a poetry collection*—
it felt like a life jacket, and I was happy, as though I’d returned alive because of it.
Water hyacinths, cats, whales, and calves,
the moss I tended while growing up—
if you watch quietly, you can hear the sounds,
and lately, I see sad and strong people
who use their own voices to secure safe shores and forests.
At times like that, the green light of my own forest briefly shines through.
Oh, by the way,
there’s a lake where forests overlap.
When we can sit together there,
let’s cook something we’ve never made before and eat it.
I’ll muster the courage, because overlapping dreams
sometimes come into clearer focus.
When I listen to how you breathe,
at least we’re together,
at least I’m learning and remembering the shape of your breath,
just a bit more deeply.
Translated by Jack Saebyok Jung
* I got the shadow from the poet Heeum’s poem, “Life.”
Writer 필자 소개
Yoon Eunseong
Translator 번역가 소개
Jack Saebyok Jung
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