KIM SŬNG-HŬI (1952~)
When I wake up
in the morning, the right world is there.
The right
world is rightly there.
The rightful
world is rightfully there.
Why, every
day, rightfully, there?
As if that is
where it rightfully ought to be?
The rightful
world is there so rightfully
that no one
can unpeel its thick skin.
It exists
there quite rightfully.
Someone
rightful rightfully made the rightful world, surely?
Someone
capable of making it rightfully,
someone still
rightful after having made it.
and since
rightfulness is obviously always right,
anyone trying
to peel the rightful world
gets smacked
away by the hand of the obvious.
The rightful
hand is an invisible hand
but why is it
so rightfully obvious?
Always a
stranger to the rightful world, I
cannot believe
what the obvious world says.
Likewise the
obvious world
certainly does
not think much of me.
and the
obvious world is taming our world.
Let's file
suits against the rightful world!
Let's file
suits against the obvious world!
Sand's
occupation forces are drawing nearer day by day,
the rightful
world our feet sink into all day long.
Hobbling
painfully on, my fate obscure,
I have
discovered that the hardest battle in the world
Is the battle
with that.
Suppose I
grabbed hold of the obvious and rightful
and gobbled
them both up first?
Before the
sands of the obvious harden into concrete,
before the
prison of the rightful devours the world entirely.
Butterflies,
flowers, clouds, streams.
The child is
afraid the colors may go over the lines.
How did she
learn
it's wrong to
go over the lines?
Those
butterflies, flowers, clouds, and streams
are all
imprisoned inside lines.
outside the
lines, must they?
Fear overflows
from the child's gentle eyes.
All day long,
docile and neat, my child is carefully
coloring
inside the lines as the instructions say.
I would tell
her: Go on, dear.
Sribble over
the lines. Paint outside the lines.
Butterflies,
streams, clouds, and flowers
are all things
that explode.
They are all
alive, dear.
Things that
blossom, surging and scrambling over the lines
Things that
trespass, that break the law, dear.
but being
Mummy is an institution too.
I'll bind you
with the ropes that once bound me!
I am that
woman and the governor-general.
Kill Mummy,
then, dear!
Laugh.
From the time
there was chaos in the beginning
my laughter
blended happily with the chaos.
It started
when the universe divided with its first wound
I was pushed
to the edge of the world
and hung
dangling there,
a laugh that
would overwhelm the abyss,
laughing in
all the nights of the world, perhaps.
was the bitter
resentment of shaking leaves
then at rising
tide, it came slipping out,
the runaway
laugh of all the world's ebbing tides, perhaps.
as I was
waiting for a train
the woman
beside me began to laugh,
a hawking
sound as if her throat was full of phlegm,
her laughter
was like a fit of coughing.
It seemed a
hopeless fugue of gloom
mingled with
the ponderous predestination
filling the
underground cavern's night
kneaded with
sobs weary of life.
As her shoulders
heaved, through the fingers covering her face
the passionate
rapture of an evil spirit overflowed.
She hurled
herself down, fell,
she died
laughing still on the subway tracks.
The weight of
the train put an end to her life
all that was
left was blood,
a packet of
bones, a bleached scarf,
a little
bloodstained hair tangled in the scarf.
She had
laughed to the end, made the cavern ring
With her low
damp laughter.
on the Plaza
de Mayo in Argentina,
May 1980 in
Kwangju, nameless tombs and missing persons,
the countless
mourners following
dead student
Lee Han-yol's coffin,
a vast crowd
that seemed to groan as if urging
those who
still lived to follow behind!
Africa's black
tears like diamonds sobbing,
mothers in
Chechenia pleading: Don't shoot my son!
standing naked
in front of the invaders's tanks
Chechenia's
mothers.
unstoppable, making
my lungs and ribs resound,
breathtaking
laughter bursting out,
immobilizing
arms, legs, shoulders and back.
Was the laugh
that rang through New York's subway
my own dark
answer, my tribute to humanity's night?
across a vast
and ancient region.
When hope to
breathe is scarce, when sad comedy
and
preposterous tragedy are daily occurences,
I laugh on
recalling what loss, deprivation, disappearance
are contained
in every wave of the tide.
Passing
ex-presidents's houses,
flitting past
the National Assembly,
passing press
magnates' offices,
I laugh.
I laugh.
a slurry of
coal-black despair,
with our
generation's lungs, full of miners's disease,
I laugh
beside old
hero Yi Sun-shin's grubby statue
in the middle
of Seoul.
Apart from
slippery words, is anything else slippery
prescribed or
needed to get out of the cavern?
To get out of
the cavern:
Mozart,
airmail postcards, swings,
Falling into
revolution
To get out of
the cavern
power is
needed, of course,
a love
stronger than the cavern's power
a fascination
stronger than the cavern's power.
The unknown,
unknown, unknown
the unknown of
that fascination like a woman's name
has to draw
you more strongly than the cavern's power.
(Koreans-say-they-get-their-news-from-KBS-so-the-ABC-ad-saying-that-
most-Americans-get-their-news-from-ABC-is-obviously-copied-isn't?)-
locked-in-a-little-square-in-a-square-in-a-square-in-a-square-how-can-I-
rescue-you?
-masks-watching-cartoons-the-mousse-clan-too-who-love-automobile-ad
-models-slim-as-the-little-mermaid-and-girls-who-love-Vicman-virtual-reality
-spraying-a-foam-of-happiness-making-me-thirstier-and-thirstier-as-I-go-on
-until-finally-I-crawl-towards-a-fridge-decorated-with-a-camel-and-collapse-
there-craving-craving-craving-and-craving-ohohohoh
laughter
bright as white heroin
so-called
ether laughter
borne on
laughter excessively black
spreading
ridiculously far
capable of
defeating the laughter like white heroin
that defies
the cavern's laughter
that defies
oblivion's laughter to get out
Struggling
Struggling
Struggling
Struggling
This time I?
really dead
As I said that
I
Came
Springing
Up
Sun
Seen alone
At the earth's
ultimate edge
I
L
E
N
T
L
Y
Like the white
whale's solemn breath
Quietly
raising a waterdrop fountain
As it raises
its head
Above the
surface
As if
receiving a gift from the god of pain
Oh, I'm alive
again
Springing up
As if trying
to say Whew ?