Kim Nam-Ju (1946 - 1994)
A
militant social and political activist since his university days, Kim Nam-Ju
was sentenced to fifteen years' imprisonment for his political activities in
1979. His first volume of poems was published in 1984. He was released from
prison in late 1988 and married a few weeks later. He died in February 1994.
Poetry's Cradle Poetry's Grave
You ask
how long I've been writing
poems
and all I can answer is
that
struggle and everyday life
are my poems' cradle.
You ask
what sort of poetry my
poems are
so rough and coarse like a
woodseller's fagot of firewood
and all I can do is ask in
return
if that isn't what combat
is always like
rising higher than a
steeple in your throat at first
then breaking out in a
curse you can't control?
on the other side they
come brandishing knives
why not resist them on our
side armed with pens?
where in the world are
combats well-behaved?
is poetry always the
pastime of a well-born elite?
You ask
if I've any odd reason for
writing poems
I can only say
revolution's my way and as
I went on
on to the sound of broken hammer
and sickle
I first came to write what
they call poems
Fighting against labor's
enemy
hand
in hand with peasants and workers
fighting and bleeding
songs emerged yes songs
emerged of their own accord
I've never slaved at a
poem sitting at a desk
my poetry's cradle is no
armchair
it's
in the thickest thick of struggle
an armchair would be my
poetry's grave.
Monkeys and Sugar
It's really funny
the way Indians catch
monkeys.
This is how I'm told they
catch monkeys.
They take a coconut and
make a hole in one side
scarcely big enough for a
monkey's empty paw
then they put in some of
the sugar monkeys love so
and hang the thing up on a
high branch.
Then invariably along
comes your monkey and skillfully
slips in its paw and deftly
grabs a lump of sugar
only the paw once closed
around the sugar
won't come out, strive
though it may,
though it pulls tugs and
sweats it won't come out.
If it lets go of the sugar
it can easily get free
but how could it ever give
up such a treat?
You can come and threaten
it with hand or foot
you can beat its red
bottom with a stick, it's all the same.
Then the Indians shoot it
dead with an arrow
at which its fist opens
and lets go of the sugar.
It's really funny
what it takes to make a
monkey let go of sugar
and a backward country's
president let go of power.
Massacre
It
was a day in May.
It
was a day in May 1980.
It
was evening on a day in May 1980 in Kwangju.
At
midnight I saw
riot
police replacing regular police.
At
midnight I saw
soldiers
replacing riot police.
At
midnight I saw
American
civilians leaving the city.
all
vehicles being prevented from entering the city.
Ah,
what a grim midnight that was.
Ah,
what a deliberate midnight that was.
It
was a day in May.
It
was a day in May 1980.
It
was midday on a day in May 1980 in Kwangju.
At
midday I saw
bands
of soldiers armed with bayonettes.
At
midday I saw
groups
of soldiers ready to attack the people.
At
midday I saw
groups
of soldiers ready to rob the people.
At
midday I saw
groups
of soldiers incarnating evil.
Ah,
what a fearful noon that was.
Ah,
what a candid noon that was.
It
was a day in May.
It
was a day in May 1980.
It
was evening on a day in May 1980 in Kwangju.
At
middnight
the
city was a heart abuzz like a beehive.
At
midnight
the
streets were a river of blood flowing like lava.
At
midnight
the
breeze was stirring the bloody hair of a murdered girl.
and
at midnight
the
dark was devouring a child¡¯s eyeball ejected like a bullet
and
at midnight
the
murderers were taking the bodies away somewhere.
Ah,
what a dreadful midnight.
Ah,
what an organized midnight.
It
was a day in May.
It
was a day in May 1980.
It
was midday on a day in May 1980 in Kwangju.
At
noon
the
sky was a blood-red cloth.
At
noon
in
the streets not a house that was not weeping.
Mount
Mudung put on mourning dress and veiled its face.
At
noon
Yongsan
River stopped breathing and held its breath.
Ah,
the massacre at Guernica was not this grim, for sure,
the
devilish plotting not so refined.