Salt
Like someone who is deeply scarred
The ocean is heavy with silence.
Loving is more painful than hating.
Look at the glare of the summer heat
Biting the ocean’s body (older than basalt) and hanging on.
The ocean vomits up
what once it silently embraced.
What sunshine grows is only one thing,
Created by the drying of even a drop of water:
The hard water’s white bones
The dots of white blood, scattered across the plains
Of a salt field, baking in the sun
Looking like pomegranate seeds.
I finally confess,
Hatred was a little more painful than love
A person, in pain for so long,
Passes slowly by the salt field.
Maybe he is the kind who will breed
More love than hatred.
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Footnotes: Americans often think of pomegranates solely in terms of their juice. However, the actual fruit of the pomegranate, its tightly-packed seeds, is more familiar to Koreans, and is what is being referenced here.
시인 장석주 by Poet, Chang, SeokJoo
The poet, Seok-Ju Chang, was born in Non-San, Chung-Cheong-Nam-Do, South Korea, in January 8, 1955. His first published
work was “Midnight” that he received new and emerging poet award from Monthly Literature in 1975. In 1979, he awarded his poem, “Fly, Gloomy Dream” inChosun Il-Bo, Spring Literature and Dong-A-Il-Bo, Spring Literature, Critique, “Existence and Unrealism”.
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Translated by Clara Soonhee Kwon-Tatum, Ph.D and Matthew Lewis, MA
