A Misdelivered Package
Sometimes, life is a wrongly delivered package
The body is a sealed package
There is an unopened book inside my body
There is an unhatched dove inside my body
A cave inside my body grows stalactites
There are twin snakes with wings inside my body
There is a bat colony with degenerate eyes inside my body
As soon as I was born I fell crying like a wolf cub
Started crawling like a turtle
Prattled like a parrot
In my youth, poisonous questions and doubts
growing inside my body like a bad cancer,
I wandered about sodden with rain.
Sometimes, a bad luck package
is delivered wet.
Unbloomed,
I write
Like carving letters in stone, I write with pain
A heavy book called a life,
Engraving muddy memories on every page
This … this is the best package that can be delivered to me
One winter morning,
A huge and heavy package was delivered.
Barely able to move it with my weak arms,
I suddenly realized
Misdelivered packages are more common than one might think.
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
