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POETRY
Selected Poems by Ha Jaeyoun (2)
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- onDecember 4, 2019
- Vol.46 Winter 2019
- byHa Jaeyoun
- Like All the Beaches in the World
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Tr. Jake Levine Moonji2019154pp.
Hello, Draculas
If you let me inside you
I will stay by your side forever
And with the face of a child or an old man
I will give you all of my love.
From beginning to end,
Even though all the rooms of the world are filled with sunshine,
The fact that you’re alive, how beautiful to know
That I’m the only one who knows it.
It’s okay if you don’t abandon the boy in you and
It’s okay if I don’t desert the girl in me.
Even though all the rooms in the world are full of wide open doors,
The fact you’re in agony, how beautiful to know
That I am the only one who knows it.
If you give me your permission
To become a white bride or virgin lunatic,
I will be the evidence
That you are you.
In the gushing darkness,
Rather than birthing a baby,
We will give birth to ourselves.
The we that we will make
Will really live.
But only if you say hey
In a voice that’s never been used in the world,
Only if my ears don’t go deaf
In the sunlight that brightens this world.
Translated by Jake Levine, Hyemi Seok, Soohyun Yang
Author's Profile
Ha Jaeyoun (b. 1975) made her literary debut in 2002 when she won Literature and Society’s New Writer’s Award. She has published three poetry collections, Radio Days (2006), Like All the Beaches in the World (2012), and Cosmic Goodbye (2019), and the monograph The Adventure of Modern Poetry and the Changing Korean Language (2012). She is a visiting professor at the Korea University School of Liberal Arts Education.
