Back to Issue Fifty-Seven

Shakti was a dog who mixed darkness and body, a large dog dark all             over and even darker eyes, a dog lying down in Karolina’s narrow and          poor kitchen. Karolina, what does the name Shakti mean? Soul, it means      soul. A dog who didn’t even glance at the bit of bread I tore off for her.             A dog who, when Karolina said Shakti, let’s go for a walk, got up slowly       and passed through darkness into an even bigger darkness. In winter in Uppsala it’s dark as early as two. It’s bright in Seoul isn’t it? Yeah, even at night it’s too bright. A dog who walked across the crunching frosted field. A          dog who slowly passed me by and sometimes looked back. A few years       later, I happened to meet Karolina at a café. It was during volunteer             work helping refugees. How’s Shakti? Shakti’s dead. Why? How? Old age,     she suffered a lot before dying.
Even darkness ages and suffers. Darkness grows fat and swallows itself         and disappears into a bigger darkness. The soul quietly goes ahead.            Walks slowly in front of me. Looks back to see if I’m following. Can’t             be seen.
LIKE THE KWAHAMA HORSE


by CHOI JOENGRYE, TRANS. BY SUE HYON BAE AND MATTHO MANDERSLOOT
Like the horse passing by, the summer was passing by, dreamlike. Like the kwahama horse, I was passing under a fruit tree. Riding that low horse, the hoof sounds were passing like the voice of that time. I was passing by, trampling on the dust below the horse hooves, the weeds     in the dust. The time I do not belong to, the unfamiliar land I do not belong to crumpled, and as it crumpled the clouds, the clouds passed    by in billows like time, like the arrow aimed with bated breath by the soldier on horseback.
The gorge in the distance was getting deeper, but I didn’t know. Pebbles rolled until I forgot all the names of the friends I went camping with on the beach that summer. As the gorge in the distance became deeper, I passed by without knowing the present passing by, like the horse passing by, dreamlike.
Translator's note: The kwahama is a horse native to Korea that was said to be small enough that a rider could pass under a fruit tree. The poem hinges on the word mal, which can mean both "horse" and "speech/words."
ANT AND HAN RIVER BRIDGE


by CHOI JOENGRYE, TRANS. BY SUE HYON BAE AND MATTHO MANDERSLOOT
If an ant crossed the Han River Bridge, would the bridge bend or not? What are you talking about, how can a single ant bend the Han River Bridge? If all the ants in the world gathered like Bukhan Mountain     and crossed the Han River Bridge, would the bridge bend or not? Well, of course it would, like if a train loaded with Bukhan Mountain was crossing it. So when a single ant crosses the bridge, the Han River Bridge must bend as much as that one ant’s weight, even if you can’t  see it. It weighs close to nothing, but weight is weight. It seems a certain thought of the same weight, a thought that can’t be said to be there or not, comes and goes. The thought of you comes like that, like it’s always coming but can’t completely arrive. Even when I’ve totally forgotten, I wake up one day and it’s been coming overnight and it’s already gone, as though that’s the only way it can come back. Just like that, existence has almost no weight, and something like the weight of thought passes by. Just now, the Han River Bridge bent ever so slightly.

author pic here
 Sue Hyon Bae  received her MFA from Arizona State University, where she is currently a PhD candidate in the Comparative Culture and Languages program researching contemporary South Korean cancer narratives. She is the author of a collection of poetry, Truce Country (Eyewear Publishing, 2019), translator of Ha Jaeyoun’s Radio Days (Black Ocean Press, 2023), and co-translator of Kim Hyesoon’s A Drink of Red Mirror (Action Books, 2019). Her work has appeared in TheTelegraph, Asymptote, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere.
 Mattho Mandersloot  is a translator and author. He translated numerous works of Korean literature in various genres, from bestselling novels to picture books. His postgraduate research focused on sound symbolism and mimetic words in the context of translation. While living in Seoul, he met weekly with Choi Jeongrye, having crossed paths during her residency at the National Centre for Writing, Norwich. Currently, he is based in Jacksonville, Florida.


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