Traditore

A Night When the Cat Licks the Butcher’s Window

A Night When the Cat Licks the Butcher’s Window by Kim Kyung-ju
Translated by Toji 

Spiders crawl into the ears of
children asleep on the streets.
A cat presses against the butcher’s window at midnight.
Lifting its heels, it claws at the glass.
In the trash can, make-up is peeled off the faces of heads chopped into pieces.
Hooks mounted on the walls spread their legs.
Blood drips onto time.
In the water-filled fluorescent lights,
insects lay dead eggs.
Moving to and fro between a piece of dangling flesh
is a lonesome shadow; his lower body is unclothed.
The cat arches its back and stares.
Its black tongue begins to lick the neck of a fish.
Licking the intestines with its salivating mouth,
the cat glows in hunger under the street lights.
Its tongue sucks on blissful mortification.
A woman who has just turned the corner is being gagged.

The Peace of a Holiday

The Peace of a Holiday by Shim Bo-seon
Translated by Toji 

Today is a holiday.
It was peaceful in the morning.
I watched Tom and Jerry with my nephews.
My younger brother and his wife smiled quietly.
My younger sister drank a cup of mild coffee.
My mother aged ever so slightly.

Today is a holiday.
It is peaceful in the afternoon as well.
My second nephews asks, “Uncle, when are you getting married?”
I see that he has learned about divorce.
My first nephew stands in silence
before his father’s memorial portrait.
I see that he has learned about death.

Today is a holiday.
I hope it will be peaceful throughout the evening.
I have two missed calls.
I bring you to mind, my beautiful.

I bring you to mind, my love.
I grow curious of the scenery outside the window.
If there is empty space, I want to jump off.
If there are clouds, I want to jump on.

Today is a holiday.
I don’t think there will ever come a day
as peaceful as today.

In Winter That Year

In Winter That Year by You Hee-kyoung
Translated by Toji 

In winter that year, I ended my long-time relationship and bought a blue safari jacket, which I wore until the season wound down. I don’t recall the songs that I enjoyed listening to. I smoked several packs of cigarettes and could not quit. I did not shiver. In winter that year, when nothing mattered,

many people died. Once in a while, I looked at the billboard but I did not make the news. Once in a while, life was all right. Once in a while, birds flew. Once in a while, I met up with people and exchanged name cards. Wherever I went, I had my age bound around me. I suffered from pancreatitis. I did not take the medicine prescribed to me. Just like that, another year was passing. 

The trees halted. I wanted to write about winter but could not. With everything appearing pointless, the words that I had touched shook their bodies. Many people were still living there. Old dogs clambered up the slope, and the kids were still good runners. 

The scrap of paper I found in winter that year had been crumpled up. The words written in the paper had shaken and overflown. It all happened in winter that year. I hated someone to the core. He is no longer in this world. All I could do was ask. When I raised my hand and rose from my seat, no one was there. 

Winter always promised that a next winter would come. An everlasting farewell was either impossible or had an immeasurable depth. I was dying. Help was everywhere, but no one picked me up. I wrote my diary in many sentences and erased even more. I still could not give up. Because no one looked into me, I was not curious about whatever it was that possessed such tenacity.

Were we indeed appropriate? I kept trying to hide my hands. I was always wary of the hands that wanted to remain unseen, but these hands were innocent. When my friends disappeared one by one, I thought of their names and realized that we had become of that age.

There was something that reeled me in. I fell asleep often, and there were nights when I heard something snapping. In winter that year, I gave up that winter and, at the same time, I wanted to see all of those winters. I was safe. This was what made me afraid. I could not go to sleep whenever this thought came into mind. In winter that year, I was blown in and blown out. Having flown too far away, I am now out of sight. 

The Last Dessert

The Last Dessert by Shim Bo-seon
Translated by Toji

The sun, as though sitting askew in a chair, is perched on the horizon.
Darkness spreads like wine spilt on the table. 
The stars that are charging toward extinction are frighteningly bright.
Even the Creator, who had been strolling the halls of the universe, steps aside.
There is something musical about the lassitude of the beach.
Waves pluck at waves and breaks into white.
Beyond the horizon lives the god of alcohol, who brews drinks from twilight.
Ships filled with human gluttony, accompanied by a fishy odor, loiter in the neighboring seas.
Would the twelve apostles have finished their drink and meal during the Last Supper? 
Jesus saw that Peter had a voracious appetite and felt a surge of anger. 
May a harsh bitterness forever dominate the underside of your tongue.  
I believe everything that lies ahead is a fatal mistranslation of today. 
Soon, it will be time to decide whether or not to have dessert.
Above the horizon barely dividing the black sea and the black sky,
lies a full moon as ashen as the face of Judas bolting from his seat. 

Two

Two by Shim Bo-seon
Translated by Toji

Two rays of sunlight.
Two forks in time.
Two pieces of dreams.
Two times of looking back.
Two emotions.
Two people.
Two stages.
Two directions.
There are only two kinds of events -
One is possibility,
the other is nothingness. 

Here and Now

Here and Now by Shim Bo-seon
Translated by Toji

I visited life by chance.
When I die, I shall go back to being the brother of a dog. 
With neither soul nor conscience,
to the side of a quadruped that has stiffened halfway through barking.
But here and now,
I am with my human brothers. 
The things that make me feel good,
when reading a thick book of life
made up of tens of thousands of warm bare feet,
go ‘sniff, sniff, sniff’ at my eyes,
leaving behind ruddy, clear footprints.
Following the coughs and guitar sounds
heard from before I was born,
I have come
to humans, who
wear their hearts like stars in a bright afternoon. Now,
let me throw you a question. 
What is the shortest distance between two hearts?
A straight line? No!
Having no other choice, no other choice,
one human and another embrace each other.
The mathematics of love shifts the Archimedean point 
from outer space to the navel.
Two hearts are conceived in a single chest. 
A vast constellation is built from two stars.
So many figures connected by god
to create the soul of man! 
And so, here I am now; 
to be human,
to love,
to stop for a moment at a shabby way station
in the midst of a journey from nought to nought. 

Dead Cells of the Alley

Dead Cells of the Alley by Kang Yun-mi
Translated by Toji

The alley is a cave.
It always seemed like winter.
The temperature and humidity were kept constant.
It was not just one person who had grown accustomed.
From the room with the common toilet
to the one with the porch. In the Orion,
stars of the first to fifth magnitude twinkle at the same time.
Like the expression about having everything except what we don’t have,
the corner shop was a cliche. Thanks to the panty thieves
and eyes of peeping toms, 
there were times when the alley regained its energy.
We gathered together, worrying about finding jobs,
or talking about the rent that was priced higher than our youth.
We bit into drumsticks while despising cheap romance.
The landlady’s advice about youth being our fortune -
we understood but did not want to know. 
Now, at the beginning of winter,
I wonder where the words we shared get tossed into a pile.
The alley becomes more silent than silence when the door closes.
We paid rent to the passing presence that faintly leaked out,
and formed a faceless family. 
Lampposts, mailboxes, doors, and even in the toilet, 
flyers are plastered like dead cells of the alley, plastered on
the same spot that had been plastered on. Perhaps
it is the hardened stain of hope
left behind from the struggle to find balance
by those who are heels to the alley. 

Probabilistic, Too Probabilistic

Probabilistic, Too Probabilistic by Shim Bo-seon
Translated by Toji 

As if repeating an old habit, I stare out of the window into the darkness. You ask, why do you stare so long at the dark? I reply, I did not know it was dark. You ask again. Now that you know it is so, why do you continue to stare? I reply, I am in a dream. Looking at the darkness over my shoulder, you say. No, you are wide awake. It is merely your long stretch of loneliness that has carved a dreamy expression on your face. 

Tonight, one out of ten departs to some place, one out of ten may become terribly lonely, and one out of ten could be weeping away. My face turns as pale as the moon, stuck in the distant darkness like a nickel coin, when I think of the probability of us breaking up (= 0.1 x 0.1 x 0.1). All I want to do is huddle and fall asleep on the euphemistic inner side of time, where the beginning and end are unclear. Forgetting whether I am man or woman, I am now plunging into anguish, and only anguish. 

Like all sick dogs and all greenhorns, I am awkward in front of fate. I have held you in my arms for a long time, but my heart rejects bliss; a depressing premonition hammers violently into my heart. Coincidence is the slightest moment of hesitation by fate. In that moment, some other fate brought us together. What does it matter if fate and coincidence are intertwined like the Mobius strip? Like grains of sand, we are being scattered in all directions before each other. 

On you, I catch the fishy whiff of night fog. Your gaze must have returned to meet my eyes after crossing the inland marsh from the darkness over my shoulder. You say, you are like a worthless book that is flawed from the very first page. I close my eyes in shame and ask. Here, there are lies about everything and the truth about nothing. Which of the two is less dismal? Which will be placed on an immortal bed in the far-off future? The probability is fifty-fifty. Is not probability an obscure method of calculation, consisting of numbers that conceal their tragic identities? 

Are you gone when I open my eyes? Alas, you have left. As if repeating the same old habit, I stare at the darkness that has blackened in your absence. If I were to proceed in order, it is time now to weep.  

A Hypothesis of Urban Loneliness

A Hypothesis of Urban Loneliness by Shim Bo-seon
Translated by Toji

A cat
lies on the road like a fallen leaf.
An elephant-like bus,
with a square body and round humps for legs,
stops before the dead cat, as if in mourning. 
Someone says,
skid marks reflect
the anguish of wheels.
Someone replies,
the wheels will burst into tears at the last stop. 
The new mayor dreams of an enlightened city,
but the citizens are lonely, and lonely still. 
Repeating the same words over and over - this is proof.
Sirens wail faintly from a distance.
Once, it was the wick of terror kindled by a dictator.
Now, it is as sorrowful as the gardenia scent leading the blind. 
Someone says,
wait and see,
the wheels will eventually burst into tears at the last stop.
Day after day,
the citizens are lonely, and lonely still. 
The diminishing difference between friends and the dead - this is proof.
One person, and another.
One cat, and another. 

Today, I

Today, I by Shim Bo-seon
Translated by Toji

Today, I have no purpose, like a shaking feather.
Today, I hide behind things that have long disappeared.
The sun loses its kindness of the morning
and glares amidst the purple dignity of the sunset.
When the moon wears the authority of the evening,
night will soon begin from sorrowful looks on pedestrians.
I have been indifferent to the black corpse of birds,
the gray wrinkles drawn one by one on my forehead,
my neighbor’s late hammering,
among other things. 
Out of an urgency for both rules and emotions,
I forgot the past,
I forgot my dead friends,
I forgot the anguish that engulfed me last year.
Today, I make a hole called the future in the calendar.
Next week’s desire,
next month’s nothingness,
and some crucial
year of regurgitation.
I know my share of tragedy still remains.
I know everyone has the right to hate.
Today, I was scowling at someone’s sorrowful face.
Today, I fell in love with a girl.