So here, in this room where anyone can turn the light off and on, in this room where one can lock the door and go out, why have I crouched down so long
Refurnishing the thinning blood with ink
Moving from one book to another, from this chair to that
Among the walls crowded with books
And the piles of documents precariously heaped
Why have I passed my life chewing only shreds of paper
This prison, so safe and free
That visitors could not recognize it as a prison
Even the guard has gone away forgetting he confined me there
Here poetry starts to resemble hieroglyphics
In my mouth rustles earth instead of words
It seems one cannot go out on one’s own feet
Like the type printed on paper
Turning Rotten or scrawny
As a brick house may suddenly become a brick tomb
A face to unearth in the remains after the paper walls collapse
Do not wait for a poem to germinate from the paper
So today, in this old room, in this room where the sun comes in only 30 minutes a day, to know that anything that glitters perilously is not just a fluorescent lamp
- 2017 Today’s Poetry Award-winner
Ra Heeduk made her literary debut by winning the 1989 Jungang Ilbo Annual Spring Literary Contest. Her major poetry collections include To the Roots, The Words Stained the Leaves, It’s Not That Far from Here, What is Darkening, A Missing Palm, Wild Apples, A Time When the Words Return, and Filename Lyric Poetry. Her prose collections include A Half Bucket of Water, Remember Those Lights, I’m Going to Get There on Foot Step by Step, and Wrinkles of Art. She has earned several major prizes including the Paeksuk Literature Award, the Midang Literary Award, the Sowol Poetry Prize, the Contemporary Literature Prize and the Kim Sooyoung Literature Prize. She is currently a professor in the Department of Creative Writing at Seoul National University of Science and Technology.
Translated by Kim Kooseul / Darcy Paquet
* 《Cultura》 2021 December (Vol. 90) *