[51st Korea Times Translation Awards] Poetry Grand Prize: 1mg of Anaesthetic

Cover of the 184th "Quarterly Changbi," which includes Choi Jeong-rye's poems / Courtesy of Changbi

Written by Choi Jeong-rye
Translated by Mattho Mandersloot

1mg of Anaesthetic

1mg of anaesthetic put me to sleep
Sending me

Wandering across glaciers

Having to scale an iceberg
Ascending
A mountain of medical waste

1mg was too heavy
Shouldering just 1mg
I struggled to move up

I wanted to shrug it off, that 1mg

[51st Korea Times Translation Awards] Judges' Report

2020-11-11 18:42 | People & Events

[51st Korea Times Translation Awards] Poetry Grand Prize winner Mattho Mandersloot

2020-11-11 18:52 | People & Events

It was so heavy
I called my mom, my mom, my late mother

And the wide-open glacier echoed back

Blanket Out the Window

A blanket hangs out the window
Naked in the sun

No patriotism, no treachery
No flag of this or that country
Whether made of cotton or polyester
It's free from all thought, every idea
Our life

Like our innermost feelings
After being criticized

Though it's hard to get the gist
Of criticism voiced in silence

A close-lipped family
Lays bare their hearts
Out their small and shabby room
Hangs a thick blank sheet

Syllogisms

These goats managed to climb a tree
Dangling from its branches like mysterious fruit
Passing by a cottage with goats on the roof
We huffed and puffed for a while
That day we hiked the mountain
Walking and laughing, hand-in-hand
Watching our grown-up children
Each one dangling from their own branch
We wake up to eat breakfast
Drop our spoons without a word
See you later
Off to work
Where we talk to people
Who talk back to us
Watching chauvinist people say chauvinist things on the news
I get worked up like them
They speak in syllogisms
Apartments are made of concrete
Concrete is a mixture of cement, water and gravel
Therefore apartments are made of those three things
Their viewpoints are unchangeable
Vodka is made of potatoes
Potatoes are vegetables
Therefore vodka is salad
As someone might paraphrase them
They say they listen but they don't care what you say
We don't eat to live
We live to eat
As the age-old maxim goes
The goats stay up the tree
Not to eat, I think
Nor to live
If you ask me
They went up
Just to go up
And now they're there
Unable to come down

Site Map E-paper Subscribe Register LogIn
Site Map E-paper Subscribe Register LogIn