Weight of Dust
On a spring night when the peach blossoms scatter here and there
I built a campfire on a riverbank and cooked rice.
Abundant steam floated up from the cooking rice.
When it was about done, under the evening glow,
Water flowed slowly into the rice paddies across the river.
Suddenly I remembered a crematorium in Nepal.
“Pop!”
“Pop!”
Brains were bursting in the flames.
Dogs were licking brain matter scattered all around
And children were rummaging through heaps of red ashes, looking for pieces of gold.
Although it takes only two hours to turn a human being into ashes,
Sometimes they threw half-burnt bodies into the river
Because poor families did not have enough money to buy firewood.
They always burnt the head first
And the two feet last.
Between a head supporting thoughts
And two feet supporting the world,
I tried for a while to weigh which sustained life more, and I ended up collapsing like ashes.
For a human being to arrive at the end of something,
And, there, finally
To weigh the dust and return to the beginning…
Every evening on that riverbank, while the rice was boiling,
I committed sins like I composed poems
And I committed poems like I composed sins.
The water in the rice paddy rose deeper today than it was in the river
And this is not just because of the detour I have taken.
Lee, San-ha 1987, when he was active in the propaganda of Democratization Movement Youth Union, Lee San-ha announced the epic poem, which reveals the genocide and truth of ‘Jeju 4 · 3
Translated by 전승희 Seung-Hee Jeon
(literary critic and translator, editor of Asia: A Magazine of Asian Literature)
