In Front of the Round Wall
Kim Hyesoon | Poetry
translated by Cindy Juyoung Ok
If you post a letter
it will come back
If you send love
circling the earth round
your loving wrists
will be back soon and
shatter under your feet
If you fly a bird
the bird will fly away
get stuck to me and
if you spend a lifetime
letting it flow
riverwater will go
and return again and
if you spread your limbs out
to send them to the sky
the sky will bend back returning
to land horizon and water horizon and
in this way
on the last day
in front of the wailing round wall
I to you
throw curses
Yes this one
come on out
and get your poison!
And then
quickly I hold the poison bowl
and drink it away
Kim Hyesoon has published fourteen Korean poetry collections and won most major literary awards in South Korea. Her international honors include the Griffin Poetry Prize in Canada and the Cikada Prize in Sweden, and her books have been translated into several languages. Kim was a creative writing professor at the Seoul Institute of the Arts for many years and has a Ph.D. in Korean Literature from Konkuk University.
Cindy Juyoung Ok is the author of Ward Toward (Yale University Press, 2024) and a fellow at the Kenyon Review, MacDowell, and Literature Translation Institute of Korea. Her translations of Kim Hyesoon’s poems appear in The Hopkins Review, Asymptote, and Copper Nickel.
Featured Image by Diana Light