For this week’s Translation Tuesday, we’re presenting two highly evocative poems by Korean poet Park Ju-taek. The first, “Missteps”, portrays a group of men, “hard as insomniac stones”, whose fragile companionship seems to be threatened by an overwhelming yet nebulous existential dread. “I Am Not an Atheist” forcefully buffets us with its speaker’s emotional turmoil; a hyperawareness of “the cyanic death that comes with mortality” provokes a confrontation with the divine. But the poems escape clear interpretation, and perhaps feel most similar to paintings—the mysterious cityscapes of Giorgio de Chirico or Edward Hopper come to mind. Heinz Insu Fenkl’s sensuously renders Park’s distinctive atmospheres, bringing his unsettling afterimages into high relief.
Missteps
No one kept track of the time.
The men who needed a long talk did not return to their homes.
A car drove by, its headlights on.
And then—those men of few words—disappeared into a bar;
a brief silence settled in.
It was a starless night,
our natures hard as insomniac stones
and tainted, just like the world.
One man stepped out of the bar,
and as he walked along the visible street—
the dark street, with its open lips—
he saw shadows still trapped in the bar
and insects dead on the cement floor.
The wind blew. The remaining men all rose.
Afterwards, darkness engulfed
the street toward which they walked,
their many hands fluttering in the air.