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Selected Poems by Ha Jaeyoun (1) scrap
by Ha Jaeyoun
Translated by Jake Levine
December 1, 2019
Author Bio 작가 소개
Ha Jaeyoun
Machinery
We are not being stopped
merely in order to make boundless
and minute noises.
Just as I am not a musical instrument
that can be played by someone who is not myself,
just as I look at myself resulting from myself
Somewhere, as love is shared,
unqualified persons are conceived.
Leaving our former world, we
merely turn our new planet into a wasteland.
As the breath that I inhale through my gills
is conveyed to your lungs, like black spots
we grow colder toward each other,
grow darker,
piercing one another’s surface.
Translated by Chung Eun-gwi, Brother Anthony of Taizé
A Person
After I used to be like that frosty pink
On the night cloud hanging over that long, stretched out island,
Just as time passes slowly,
I became a person.
Sometimes I was like the murky shadow
That startled a friend awake
Who fell asleep for a moment at the end of a flowerbed
In the afternoon.
But now
I became a person.
Soft coral, the blue of cotton candy, in the ocean raindrops are falling
From the half-face of the night moon climbing above.
The lullaby in the dream of my child
Who sleeps in the future, the final verse
Of a song no one has ever heard.
After the tide rolls in, while it rolls out again, the waves
Pull white sand, the setting sun, and starlight,
Returning them back to their place.
Vanished seasons overlap
Darkening the sky outside the earth,
And I became a person
Repearling the seashells to the string of this necklace
That connects the colors, pieces, and names
Of all the beaches in all the countries
Floating on earth.
Translated by Jake Levine, Hyemi Seok, Soohyun Yang
Spirit and Opportunity
Without any reason whatsoever,
Did you start a program
Called the infinite vacation that never ends?
When the command that enters you
Pushes you forward
In a way that can only be described as fatal,
In order to record the soul of the sandstorm
Blowing in from the farthest lands,
Your whole body must be covered with dust.
The proof is in your pupils.
All worlds begin from dust.
Spirit tumbling down the canyon of broken time.
In a scene impossible to unfold,
Like the wings of a satellite that are eternally spread,
Sourced from infinity, sorrow is transmitted
Like a single speck marked between infinity and infinity,
To us.
Translated by Jake Levine, Hyemi Seok, Soohyun Yang
The Things I Know
I know
An envelope has
Only a single person as its recipient.
The moment I stop breathing
On this side of this thin layer of air,
Is the moment I realize you start to run
On that side where the air is more thin.
When light flickers for a microsecond,
I know
Millions of messages are coming and going mid-air.
Without a single one crashing into another, they are
Delivered at high speed.
A feather of a little bird
Exposing its white belly, balancing in the sky
Falls and I know
That nobody remembers the moment
Of a feather falling.
To find the face you have now,
You threw out tens of thousands of expressions and
I know it isn’t here, but over there
Where the snowflakes falling today
Make it cold.
Translated by Jake Levine, Hyemi Seok, Soohyun Yang
An Acquired Life
The languages of other countries
Are all we need.
Love is that which disappears.
Your lips are your flag.
All that which pours out and pools,
The magic that fills your body with new blood
Rests at the tips of an exiled child.
No song begins with an anacrusis
Just to end.
Wearing a borrowed immigrant’s coat,
Clearing an incomplete throat,
Yes, yes, I, am, here,
Torn up
Continuously
As one string from a scrap of cloth
Is swept away into the wind
Into a thing that cannot be, split
Apart into unwritable text.
Translated by Jake Levine, Hyemi Seok, Soohyun Yang
Writer 필자 소개
Ha Jaeyoun
Translator 번역가 소개
Jake Levine
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