from Crow's Eye View
Poem No. 9 “Muzzle”
The firestorm blows every day and a big hand reaches my waist at last. When the smell of my sweat soaks into the ecstatic valley of my fingerprints, shoot! I will shoot! I feel in my digestive machinery the heaviness of the barrel, and in my mouth the slick muzzle of a gun. I close my mouth to shoot but instead of a bullet blast—huh? What did I really spit?
Poem No. 14
On a grassy field in front of an old castle, I put down my hat.
At the top of the castle, I tie a heavy stone to my memory and hurl it as far as I can. History weeps as it retraces the parabola. I look down at the castle bottom. A beggar is standing still like a totem pole next to my hat. The beggar is in fact above me. I wonder if he might be the specter of multiple histories in their combined form. The depth of my hat cries out to the desperate sky. Abruptly, the beggar bends his shaking body and throws a stone into my hat. I have already feinted. I see a map showing my heart migrating into my skull. A cold hand touches my forehead. My forehead is branded with the cold hand’s mark. It will not fade until some time.
Poem No. 15
1
I am in a room with no mirror. Of course, the me-inside-the-mirror has gone out right now. I shudder in fear of him. Where did he go? What is he plotting to do with me?
2
I sleep on a cold bed, damp from embracing my crime. I am absent in my explicit dream and the military boot carrying a prosthetic leg dirtied my dream’s white page.
3
I sneak into a room with a mirror. To free myself from the mirror. But the me-inside-the-mirror always enters at the same time and puts on a gloomy face. He lets me know he is sorry. Just as I am locked up because of him he is locked up shuddering because of me.
4
I am absent in my dream. In my mirror my counterfeit does not make an entrance. He craves my loneliness despite my uselessness. I have finally made up my mind to recommend suicide to him. I point him toward the viewless window. It is a window for suicide. But he instructs me that if I do not kill myself then he cannot kill himself either. The me-inside-the-mirror is almost a phoenix.
5
After covering my breast above my heart with a bulletproof shield I aim and shoot at my left breast in the mirror. The bullet goes straight through his left breast but his heart is on the right side.
6
A red ink is spilled from an imitation heart. In my dream I am late. I am sentenced to death. I am not the ruler of my dream. It is a great crime to seal up two humans who cannot even shake hands.
[Crow's Eye View: Poems No. 9, Poem No. 10, and Poem No. 15] from Yi Sang: Selected Works. Copyright 2020, translated by Jack Jung. Published by Wave Books. Used with permission by Jack Jung and Wave Books.