A Baby Fox
—When a baby fox was almost at the other side of the river, it ended up wetting its tail (The Book of Changes, “64: Mije”)
There is a river on the way there—
A deep river with strong currents
That makes you worry that a baby fox might drown while trying to cross it.
As if the baby fox already knows
That it cannot cross the river,
It shakes its red tail toward me.
But, to me,
The tail looks like a brilliant flag.
At dawn
I squat in front of the river
And throw up what I ate last night.
Grains of rice that haven’t been broken down stare at me.
Because it feels as if I can no longer change even a single grain inside me,
As if even the last refuge inside me has failed,
I bow down to even blades of straw floating down the river.
In the end, it is only my mind that can cross that river.
Although I don’t know what exists beyond it,
It could not be emptier than here and now—not at all.
A place that cannot be reached no matter how hard I run,
A place that begins only when the whole road leading up to it collapses.
Oh, dear baby fox that diligently crosses the river,
Holding its tail high even now!
If the tattered flag were not the beauty of the past,
Would it drown when it got wet?
Would it fade when it drowned?
There is a river on the way there.
A deep river with a strong current
That makes you worry that a baby fox could drown while crossing it.
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)
