I knew of her work because of a friend, and the English translators have done such a beautiful job, I can only assume. Though I lived in Korea a year, I (obviously) don't read Hangul - so I have the translated version of her poetry collection, Windflower and the poem A Goodbye to a Butterfly -
In the shadow
of my building
a butterfly
whose yellow wings
embraced the skies
lies in decay, sinless.
How you have struggled
and suffered
to preserve
your golden wings.
Returning
to the earth
is beautiful.
Do you know denying it
is dreadful? Do you know things
of vinyl and plastic
tumbling about the earth?
A warm body
of the sun
destined to dissolve
is beauty.
Goodbye
the vanishing
of your lived body
bursts my heart.
- sparked a song that hasn't made it's way fully into form, but echoes the idea that the beauty of the natural world exceeds what humans can conjure, here between two voids in the short and fragile life and waking minutes we live.
And who knows what will come of it? Still, it was a nice thing, when the spark flashed in my brain and the white noise gave way to a whisper.
This is no ballroom gown
Just some old thing I found
a silken threaded, ordinary ordinary brown
The yellow dust on your sleeve
fell from the legs of a bee
fell from a fast moving, ordinary thing
And all the ballroom glitter,
silver glitter falling through the air
will only line the shiny beds of mice, somewhere
There is no light that you'll describe to me
that's better than the light I see.
Don't bother.
A million swords have drawn,
it's flashed upon the blades
- was there, and then was gone -
Don't sing it - move on.
A million manacles have bound the innocent
and in that same light did glint anyway, anyway
So there are lighted perils
and there are shiny perils
and pretty things are everywhere -
and flashing on the sharp glass, there
I have reckoned all of this
will, by and by, into light pass
but with your hand upon my hip
In brown, I think I'll dance
Just now, I think I'll dance.
Posts
Ahhh, the ache that poetry makes.
ReplyDeleteOOh, the heart that ache breaks.
And yes, yes, Yes! I'd have it all again and again
for the warmth of that flowing blood, that red reminder
of the depth of feeling which is the depth
of the human possibility
of being impossibly larger on the inside
than the body is seen to be
with out.
Chessley
Story to follow.
Since all real-language superlatives just won't do right now, I'll use a made-up one:
ReplyDeleteSuperbulous!
ah. lovely. The link between the two poems/songs is not essential but I feel honored to know it and to feel it. Dissolving is a theme for me right now--the acceptance of it. I am am a bit aghast that you so clearly articulate what has been a very private musing; that's what songs are for, I realize, once again. Or one of the what fors, I guess.
ReplyDeletep.s. The yellow on the sleeve is genius. Yes.
ReplyDelete