Poetry

Seeing Again the Whistle in Childhood My Whistling Now as Wind Blowing by the Window

Translated by: 
Jung Hi-yeon

Translated by Jake Levine and Jung Hi-yeon


 

It is raining, but people’s faces are flowing, hugging separate things as they enter the used-book store. They unhappily place their book in a vacant space and then one worn out book spreads open in secret. Fingerprints someone left are running into a sentence. In here, like donkey’s eyes, does the mind sink into the sand? Sealed as the dried petal of a flower, I am looking for the development inside the missing fragrance. The pages torn from the book begin to appear. If it rains, the book opens and, quietly whistling, damp whistles become a swamp. Words look like bugs’ eyeballs and in a book they sit and melt. Words look like small temples submerging in the whistle. The whistle shakes the trees and crosses the water, coming and going, on the only road that doesn’t exist in the world. Inside a sandstorm crossing the continent, somebody’s whistle like a horsefly mixes. I see again the whistle in my childhood whistling now as wind blowing by the window. The uvulas of beasts looking at the village are wet like a bat. At that time I hoisted the youngest child that was a plant and over the course of one night I saw my whistle evolve and transcend a plateau. Behind dad’s back I hide and spy in the night’s reservoir. If you thought of fireplace chills that sleep and wake in the time of people, sister, you kicked the bicycle stand and I whistled weaker than you. At that time how the whistle smelled like fresh acacia. How the sound of bells inside the iron left and clipped fingernails and returned when it was night. Sister, now I am a son-in-law teaching your daughter to whistle. Winds that have the smell of lonely lips visited the banished flowers on the cliff. What is the difference between a ledge and a cliff?

 
 

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