Translation by Jaehyung Park
Copernican star
I want to know star.
I earned bread by giving stars to the nobles.
To buy a better telescope,
To steal a glimpse of another star.
Sometimes I compromised with heaven.
as much as the time has been
My beloved stars are getting bigger and bigger.
If you look up into the endless night sky,
as dizzy as the scent of a spiny flower.
The stars poured down into my heart.
The last time I saw that star,
This time, it’s this star.
round and round
Comet Revisiting after 4,200 years
Love with him
a wrong meeting
Even if they’re all coming back late,
You come a long way with a limp
I’ll give you a hot hand.
all alone in the dust
The Zombie Star Falling into the Abyss
I don’t think anyone’s gonna remember.
on one’s last companion
I’ll give you a little coat.
It’s pouring down.
With the meteor shower dreaming of a beautiful end,
a warm chest-to-heart meeting
looking up into the sky higher and higher
eye-to-eye stars
To another place of residence.
I’m going to score stars again today.
*Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543): Polish astronomer. He rejected the geocentric theory and advocated the heliocentric theory.
Oh! The Daytime Moon
Due to following the sun,
The earth’s shoulders become tilted
Due to following the earth,
The moon’s face becomes pale
They have stood each other at a distance
They are the one, the invisible one
The leap month
That covers the seething space between the lines
The moon vomits her heats every three years
The time the gods of heaven and earth become generous
The leap month
Is the month of the rotten moon
The time that can avoid even the God’s punishment
Winding sheets are made for lost souls
White eyebrows of the daytime moon
Which got out of the sky river are shining
I wanted to get closer, closer to the moon
The daytime moon puts her hands on my forehead
I sometimes dream of missing a plane
When I look at the clock,
It is a time for a plane to take off already
From then on, I run to the airport desperately
Sometimes people who are dying accompany me
Sometimes People who are in a state of
Suspended animation accompany me
Alas!
You who will always be floated in somewhere of the sky
All day, all night
When a moon awakened from a nap
Lights up the dark sky,
Fireflies make the river of time brightly and
The spirits that went up into the sky move in a hurry
The river that has been lived so long
Repeats breeding to a deep soul
The river that is evaporated at last
Longs for the growth again
Another daytime moon is crossing the sky river
Hometown Well
By accumulating blood, women’s bodies suffer
Earth makes underground water circulated through its whole body
And wombs are always burning
By the fever of blood opening its own ways to be gathered
Once a month, for replacing water,
Women gather around the well
And in the middle of rice field of my hometown
Which is afraid to be focused by many eyes
There is the well of my childhood
That has a wide open hole towards the sky
Women are pumping up water
To let their heated body cool
Sin everybody has kept in the secret at least one
The hotness that blazed up in mind helplessly
Cold water that soaks to the bone even in the middle of summer
Hometown well where we pumped up water with a gourd
Around the well
The existences who commit crimes at the previous life
Crawly gather together
And all of them are hanging or are standing on their hands
As a shape of small stringy snakes, a huge serpents or vipers
The well side where they cooled off their body at the former life
They show up there following their blissful crimes,
Even unavoidable due to their moistened bodies
A husband who was affected by leprosy and went away to the island
A baby whose father was her husband’s brother
A woman who threw her baby into the well
A young widow with
A father of her husband who had lived alone since he was young
A moistened woman, women
The well side in my memory
Is overflowing with thousands rumors even in my dreams
Earthenware coffin
Well-trimmed girls
Like salted cabbages
Are pressed down one by one
In the earthenware coffin
Salted cells sometimes
Make a cracking sound
When they are being stacked up
In the earthenware coffin
A plump and fresh girl
In the earthenware coffin
Is doing her virgin birth
With her eyes closed now
A sour beginning of sleep
That is covering over her scratches
Girl, if you are in front of
The new door of the womb
You should wait for the door to close quickly
Please don’t let it come in!
The girl is taken out of the coffin carefully
With plenty of water taken
With a fistful of light sprinkled
She is laid down along with an extinction
The girl being ripen sourly
Wind will permeate her bones
She will be fermented fishy
And sweetly
In the middle of the night
The girl in the coffin
Makes a crunching noise
Extending her joints
Makes a creaking sound
Stretching her skins
*<The door of the womb> comes from the part 2 ‘The process of the reincarnation’ in the second volume of the book [The Tibetan Book of the Dead]
THE PLANET CONCEIVING A FEW LIES
Is the devil a man who deceive someone
With a little bit of truth that a big lie combined
A word that is born a moment ago is lighter than a dandelion
A word that is buried waits her own resurrection on the wind path
A word that is missing threw herself a long ago
The spring has come like investigating something, but it is not the real one.
A noon that sun is blazing like midsummer
Full bloom of roses take season’s false pulse
As they conceive a smell of death
In the heart of the planet,
Swirling frenzied blood that is gang-raped, comes across straits
The womb of the planet
We don’t need any sonogram
A chunk labeled as an embryo
And a boundary of water
From fish, amphibian, reptile to mammal
That evolutionary seal
That false package of gene
Today, a gunfire bursts somewhere on the planet again
I can hear the heartbeat of the planet
An Embryo born today remembers the Sound.
Sungrye Han (韓成禮, 한성례) – South Korea
Born in 1955 Rep of Korea. Poet, Translator (Japanese-Korean). Adjunct professor.
She majored in Japanese language and Japanese literature at Sejong University and earned her master’s degree in Japanese studies at Sejong University’s Graduate School of Policy Science.
Her works have earned her the Newcomer Award of <Poem and Consciousness>, Korea’s the Heonanseolheon Literature Award and Japan’s Sitosozo Award, Korea’s Poetry Slam Translation Literature Award.
Book of Poetry 『The Beauty in a Laboratory』, 『Smiling flowers』in Korean, 『The Sky in the Yellowish Red Korean Skirt』, 『Drama of the Light』in Japanese. Historical essay 『The Formation of the Ancient Nation in Japan and Japanese oldest anthology Manyo-shu』 and so on.
Her poems express Korean tradition, life and death, sadness, pain and anguish in surrealism, modernism and avant-garde forms
She translated many Japanese literary works into Korean and many Korean literary works into Japanese. This work includes more than 200 volumes, for example, poems, novels, essays, poem anthologies, books for children, humanity books, self enlightenment books and scientific books. In particular, she translated many poems and Book of Poetry between Korea and Japan.In particular, she translated many poems and Book of Poetry between Korea and Japan.
Korean textbooks used in Korean middle Schools and high schools contain 20 kinds translations of her for educational purposes.
She has translated and introduced Korean and Japanese poems in literary magazines between the two countries since 1990.
She is now an adjunct Professor at Sejong Cyber University in Seoul, South Korea.
https://blog.naver.com/kudara21