The Black Coat
I take a walk in a black coat,
Stepping out of the back streets.
I feel the black coat’s weight.
The weight is not that of the black coat’s sin
But the black coat always tries to talk too much.
The black coat is heavy
Laden with the cries of ten thousand square feet
Of memory and responsibility.
The black coat is lightning.
The black coat is an empty field after the harvest.
The black coat is a dog barking in the night.
The black coat is a road on a windy sleety day.
The black coat is the father I once hated when I was a teen,
Suffering with unknown thirst.
Now he lies shrunken by sickness;
Wind is rattling the windows
Inside the black coat.
The black coat smells of dry grass.
The black coat hides the closed mouths of the dead.
My father often wore the black coat when I was young,
When he returned from work late at night,
Careless stars dotting his shoulders.
Father loved the black coat
Father said “Do not waste your life.
Keep in mind the black coat’s lesson.
A black coat is useful in life.”
But I do not like the black coat.
The black coat weighs heavily on my shoulders.
Many years later, being a father of three,
I wear the black coat.
The pockets on the sides are wombs of sadness.
I always walk with my hands meekly in the black coat’s pockets.
Silently, the black coat hangs in the corridor of the heavens,
I wear a black coat made of clouds.
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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
