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| Sungrye Han Poetry |
03 Poems by Sungrye Han (Korean Poet)
Korean Poet -Sungrye Han
Translation by :Jaehyung Park
Hometown Well
By accumulating blood, women’s bodies
suffer
Earth makes underground water circulated
through its whole body
And wombs are always burning
By the fever of blood opening its own ways
to be gathered
Once a month, for replacing water,
Women gather around the well
And in the middle of rice field of my
hometown
Which is afraid
to be focused by many eyes
There is the well of my childhood
That has a wide open hole towards the
sky
Women are pumping up water
To let their heated body cool
Sin everybody has kept in the secret at
least one
The hotness that blazed up in mind helplessly
Cold water that soaks to the bone even in
the middle of summer
Hometown well where we pumped up water with
a gourd
Around the well
The existences who commit crimes at the
previous life
Crawly gather together
And all of them are hanging or are
standing on their hands
As a shape of small stringy snakes, a
huge serpents or vipers
The well side where they cooled off
their body at the former life
They show up there following their
blissful crimes,
Even unavoidable due to their moistened
bodies
A husband who was affected by leprosy
and went away to the island
A baby whose father was her husband’s
brother
A woman who threw her baby into the
well
A young widow with
A father of her husband who had lived
alone since he was young
A moistened woman, women
The well side in my memory
Is overflowing with thousands rumors even in my dreams
Oh! The Daytime Moon
Due to following the sun,
The earth's shoulders become tilted
Due to following the earth,
The moon's face becomes pale
They have stood each other at a
distance
They are the one, the invisible one
The leap month
That covers the seething space between
the lines
The moon vomits her heats every three
years
The time the gods of heaven and earth
become generous
The leap month
Is the month of the rotten moon
The time that can avoid even the God's
punishment
Winding sheets are made for lost souls
White eyebrows of the daytime moon
Which got out of the sky river are
shining
I wanted to get closer, closer to the
moon
The daytime moon puts her hands on my
forehead
I sometimes dream of missing a plane
When I look at the clock,
It is a time for a plane to take off
already
From then on, I run to the airport
desperately
Sometimes people who are dying
accompany me
Sometimes People who are in a state of
Suspended animation accompany me
Alas!
You who will always be floated in
somewhere of the sky
All day, all night
When a moon awakened from a nap
Lights up the dark sky,
Fireflies make the river of time
brightly and
The spirits that went up into the sky
move in a hurry
The river that has been lived so long
Repeats breeding to a deep soul
The river that is evaporated at last
Longs for the growth again
Another daytime moon is crossing the sky river
A night of a stray cat crying
A stray cat cries. Stray cats flock
together and cry. They swallow each infant's soul and raise babies’ voices. A
hungry kitten cries, steals food, fights against rivals in love, and sex with
her love. Every single act is summarized in cries. Sadly, sadly, it sounds
pitiful, pathetic and sometimes even beautiful.
There is a reason why babies suddenly
cry in the middle of the night. It’s the struggle not to lose her soul to
something, and sometimes the earth's magnetic field fluctuates, even the slow
movement of the earth's lower mantle is exerting forces. It's the struggle
against all the forces of the world.
My mother, who is almost 90 years old,
never puts mushrooms in her mouth. She can't chew on the mushy mushrooms,
saying they are like the flesh of babies. As a child, when she followed her
grandmother to the next village, she used to pass by a large guardian tree of
the town. And she saw the dead body of a baby hung on the tree dripping with
rotten water. In that custom of southern hanging children on a tall tree, not
burying on the ground so the baby would not be eaten by wild beasts like
wolves, the fat mushrooms were said to have been everywhere under the guardian
tree.
A flock of stray cats cries in the
middle of the night. One by one, they swallow the spirit of babies who have
passed away in a hurry, and the pure soul makes the cry of a baby that must
have cried like that if she lives. The soul cries with an old mouth that knows
everything, not with a metaphor.
Sungrye Han (韓成禮, 한성례) – South Korea
Born in 1955 Rep of
Korea. Poet, Translator (Japanese-Korean). Adjunct professor.
She majored in
Japanese language and Japanese literature at Sejong University and earned her
master’s degree in Japanese studies at Sejong University’s Graduate School of
Policy Science.
Her works have
earned her the Newcomer Award of <Poem and Consciousness>, Korea’s the
Heonanseolheon Literature Award and Japan’s Sitosozo Award, Korea’s Poetry Slam
Translation Literature Award.
Book of Poetry 『The Beauty in a Laboratory』, 『Smiling flowers』in Korean, 『The
Sky in the Yellowish Red Korean Skirt』, 『Drama
of the Light』in Japanese. Historical essay 『The
Formation of the Ancient Nation in Japan and Japanese oldest anthology
Manyo-shu』 and so on.
Her poems express
Korean tradition, life and death, sadness, pain and anguish in surrealism,
modernism and avant-garde forms
She translated many
Japanese literary works into Korean and many Korean literary works into
Japanese. This work includes more than 200 volumes, for example, poems, novels,
essays, poem anthologies, books for children, humanity books, self
enlightenment books and scientific books. In particular, she translated many
poems and Book of Poetry between Korea and Japan.In particular, she translated
many poems and Book of Poetry between Korea and Japan.
Korean textbooks
used in Korean middle Schools and high schools contain 30 kinds translations of
her for educational purposes.
She has translated
and introduced Korean and Japanese poems in literary magazines between the two
countries since 1990.
She is now an adjunct Professor at Sejong Cyber University in Seoul, South Korea.
