Hamburg
Translated by Jeanine Walker and
Shim Jaekwan
Now I have a new hometown to die in and a new grave.
Now I have a far north European port
where I can touch the darkness for a long time.
Even though I recognize that the hometown
I was born in died before me and that a hometown
is nothing but a father,
even though I’m tired of living on the backs of stupid metaphors
and the tumbler on the shaking tips of my fingers is heavy,
the waves that count the age of the sea
flood onto the beach. I untie my mother’s bandage.
Blood-soaked gauze floods in.
The gauze turns away from me and comes rushing in.
Because my daughter’s hometown
is a faraway country where flowers bloom on the horizon,
I decide to forget the village where I was born and its shameful nationality.
Like giving water to a dead tree,
like leaning into a dead tree, my hand trembling,
I decide to forget.
Sitting on the seawall like a fish caught on a hook,
holding a boiled octopus while thinking about
a boiled seawall, I smirk. There may be sand
on my daughter’s toes, but the power of the waves
isn’t necessarily due to the age of the sand.
Translated from the Korean
