CHOI SEUNGJA

—TRANSLATED BY WON-CHUNG KIM AND CATHY PARK HONG


                                     





I HAVE BEEN TO THE SEA IN WINTER




I have been to the sea in winter.
Seagulls honked and freely shat their white droppings,
and a woman's body, drifting along the sea for three days,
was hauled in by the Coast Guard patrol boat.
Her womb was exposed to the sea
(The sea was contaminated.)
From her open womb, pale, sick children,
dazed from the trembling sea's sunlight, poured out.
Riding the foaming tide,
children scattered into the five seas and six continents.
Turned into a slippery empty rind,
the dead woman floated like a piece of vinyl.
The children who have scattered into every corner of the world
will build a sturdy cobweb at Pietermaritzburg or Odendaalsrust
in South Africa, lay their eggs inside the earth
of the Philippine jungles and spread syphilis or deliver stillborn babies
under the cover of darkness at Berlin, or on the Orchampt or on Boulevard Haussmann.
They might start a revolution in the long, tedious night–
a revolution that is always destined to fail.
I have been to the sea in winter.
(The sea was contaminated).



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I'LL COME BACK, WRITING ON A PIECE OF CLOUD




I'll come back, writing on a piece of cloud,
the breakfast table, the nothingness of a spoonful of coffee,
the infinity of boiling water in the mug.

(A child is eating
an apple outside the window.
I watch her
savoring
a world.)

Somewhere, birds cry
and the moon sinks.


I'll come back, writing on a piece of cloud.



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TOWARD YOU




Like flowing water,
I will come to you.
Like alcohol dissolving in water,
like nicotine congealing in alcohol,
like caffeine coating nicotine,
I will come to you.
Like syphilis germs flowing through veins,
like death gripping life.







TYPO 31