Clutching his comrade’s hand
he died.
He did nothing really to contribute to the independence movement,
not one act to speak of.
His forearms were so strong an awl could not pierce them.
He was good at the violin, good at sports,
good at singing at drinking parties.
Yi Jong-nak stood briefly on a small corner of his times, then went away.
The Lock-seller
Even a wooden shack had to have a lock.
Anyone who went to sleep leaving the front gate open was a fool.
Anyone who went to sleep without locking the door to his room was a fool.
Midsummer evenings,
while people were killing and being killed on the front,
in the rear thieves made their rounds by night.
Everyone had to have a padlock.
Safely locked in,
they had to hear in their dreams
the waves of the night sea.
A dusty wind was blowing in Gongdeok-dong in Seoul.
At the entrance to the alley
a seller of locks and keys
walked by, metal locks jangling from his clothes,
dressed in clothes heavy with clumps of iron.
Buy my keys!
Buy my locks!
Keys repaired. Locks repaired.
Buy my locks!
You can trust only to locks.
Buy my locks, buy my keys!
Two passing middle-school boys asked:
‘Hey, Mister!
What’s better, keyhole or key?’
The lock-seller laughed.
‘Hey kids, I don’t know,
go home and ask your parents.’
Yi Yohan the Orphan
Not one child was crying.
On the plaza in front of Busan station in 1952
there were children five-years-old,
six-years-old,
eight-years-old,
and some you could not telclass="underline"
five? six? eight?
Some bigger ones were eleven.
Some smaller ones were nine.
The children, wearing old woollen hats,
had been sent from Daegu, were headed
for Zion Orphanage at Songdo, Busan.
Gap-toothed children
deaf children
children with long trails of snot.
When they passed through tunnels
they were covered with coal smoke
in trains without windows
None was crying.
Crying was cowardly. Crying was shameful.
One of those children
was named Yi Yohan.
He had been given the family name of a pastor at a Daegu church.
His Christian name was that of John the Evangelist.
He knew nothing of his mother,
nothing of his father.
Later, this child
grew up to be one of the policemen who opened fire
to suppress the students protesting
in front of the Presidential Mansion
during the April Revolution in 1960.
Police sergeant Yi Yohan.
South Gate Street, Suwon
Soldiers,
gum sellers,
horse-carts,
ox-carts,
piles of droppings in the wake of the carts,
paper-boys,
combs, fine-toothed bamboo combs, glass beads, cheap necklaces,
urchin beggars,
Japanese-era trucks,
American army trucks.
One old beggar lay prostrate all day long.
No sign of human pity anywhere.
The hungry grew hungrier.
The cold grew colder.
In Suwon’s South Gate Street,
Myeong-gu
had no shit inside him today as the day before. None.
He could get no food
anywhere round the city gate.
For three soju bottles, he could get a few crumbs of bread.
But here there was nothing like that in sight.
Only, only
the world.
Myeong-gu’s only thought was for a bowl of rice.
Hey, monks in mountains, what use are those koans you’re contemplating?
Cheonggye Stream
The clothes they were wearing were American-made,
trousers from relief supplies,
and dyed American military jackets –
but
in the university’s French department
students dreamed of themselves as Sartre,
Camus,
André Malraux.
America outside,
France inside.
Perhaps for that reason,
the long Cheonggye Stream
flowing through Seoul between Jong-no and Ulji-ro
was not Korea’s Hudson River
but Korea’s Seine.
There was the Café Seine in Myeong-dong, too.
The Seine was a place for washing clothes,
the Seine was a sewer
with melon-sized balls of shit floating down.
The Seine was a rubbish dump.
A little farther down the Seine
on the bank toward Gwansu-dong
was Division Four of Cheonggye Stream
where the shanty town began
and battles for survival were intense.
Girls working in clothing factories along Cheonggye Stream
lived in rented rooms in shanties.
The owners were kind-hearted by night,
full of abuse by day.
It was one month since Jo Ok-ja had come to Seoul
as a factory girl.
Every one of her fingers ached.
She worked all day at a sewing machine,
with nothing to eat but five small pieces of bread.
During overtime one night
she felt dizzy, collapsed.
She liked nights.
Sometimes, in her dreams,
she saw her mother.
Heukseok-dong
One dim bulb dangled from the ceiling
of the comic books reading-room.
The shoe store stank of leather.
Flies tended bar, no customers.
In the barbershop, honey soap.
Cheap bread stands.
In the mending shop, an old worn-out sewing machine.
All the way along, nothing but wooden shacks,
steep alleys barely wide enough for one
all the way along
There was a single water tap down below.
People lined up with empty water-cans
and a 10-hwan coin; once the cans were filled,
they carried them panting up the alley.
While people were living like this,
on the battlefront people died
and at the rear, people were born.
One woman gave birth two days ago,
and here she was out carrying water.
Her breasts hung
dangling from beneath her blouse.
She gave the child the name
of its father’s North Korean home.
Yu Seon-cheon.
Seon-cheon! Seon-cheon!
Our darling Seon-cheon!
A sliver moon rose early
to shine over this slum-village on a hill.
The Porter at Seoul Station
At 5 a.m. the night train from Busan arrived,
an hour after the end of curfew.
He had to be ready at the exit.
Soon the passengers debarked.
The haggling over porterage was brief.
One large suitcase,
one sack of grain,
one small case,
all loaded onto the A-frame,