A Sweet Persimmon
The dried stem of a sweet persimmon is its navel.
The stump a vestige of the place
where once thousand springtimes passed
and where the universe gushed in.
The navel locks the path
there is no retreat.
The path is as bitter
as quinine on a mother’s breast
and the path is too long and rough.
Such is the scar of a fallen flower.
Footnotes:
Quinine was commonly used in 1950s thru 1990s when Korean mothers tried to stop their children breast feeding when they become 12 or 24 months old.
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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 & Matthew Lewis, M.A
