He was the man with hair cut short
in charge of detention cells at Seodaemun police station in the 1970s.
He never got promoted.
Every time someone came in,
every time several came in,
surely they had some fault,
and he would find it,
would kick, kick hard,
to depress their spirits from the start.
Im Cheol-man.
But after meals
he would turn to the women’s cell
and demand a song.
If someone sang a song such as,
‘I will build a house like one in a picture,’
a storm of applause would pour
from the men’s cell.
Then it would be the turn of the men’s cell.
If someone jailed for a first burglary after three larcenies
sang ‘Camellia Girl’…
Im Cheol-man would scream:
‘You lout,
shame on you, you, a man, acting so pathetic.’
A perpetual guard,
he once said in prayerful tones:
‘Just one time
these cells
were completely empty
and I was really very bored.
‘Yet my wish
is to be in charge of completely empty cells
with nobody coming in.
Hey, you bastard in cell two,
can’t you just listen quietly to what I’m saying?
Bastard.’
VOLUME 12
Colette, No Jeong-hye
Colette,
born in Lyons, France,
joined an active sisterhood.
Her younger sister first worked in Vietnam, now lives in Japan.
Colette came to Seoul decades ago.
Her Korean is fluent,
her stomach’s accustomed to Korean food.
Even without cheese,
this is her country.
How holy! How amazing!
to have arrived at such intense unity.
Her Korean name is No Jeong-hye.
Secretly, she contributed much to the Korean human rights movement,
starting with the National Democratic Students’ Federation incident,
or even before.
She circulated petitions,
collected donations,
hid people,
even promised to hide me.
Her heart’s a wide plain.
She made her nest in a Sillim-dong slum,
lived in great poverty.
She reckoned a bowl of instant noodles was a feast.
She alone is reason enough why there has to be religion.
A Blind Man by Saetgang River
No one noticed
how salty it had become,
that river
in Sorae, Gyeonggi Province.
Seo Pil-seok cannot see
that river.
Blind,
he lost his sight some time ago.
At high tide
when rising waters advance to the top of the bank,
his back aches.
He hurt his back long ago in the war,
wounded on the central front.
At low tide
his belly aches,
a problem from long working in that salt farm
where he ended up after discharge.
Later, he lost his sight.
First he had something like cataracts
and the things he saw grew hazier day by day,
until finally he could see nothing.
He thought he’d go mad in that merciless darkness.
Time seems to have been a serum even for that darkness.
He grew resigned,
life a fluttering tent
even for a sightless body.
Today, too,
high tide and low tide depend on the moon.
Old Seo Pil-seok is more a man of the moon
than a man
of the earth.
Muttering
Opposite the primary school in Hwagok-dong
remains one house from the initial development.
Most of the cement blocks in its garden wall have crumbled,
the iron gates have rusted away.
Yi Jeong-gu, owner of that house,
lost his wife a year ago
and slowly went mad, aphasic.
Time just flows, flows on
as he mutters, mutters,
mutters from dawn when he wakes
till night when he falls asleep.
He mutters when the wind blows.
Mutters when it rains.
Mutters when it sleets.
A burglar broke into that house,
heard the incessant muttering from the bedroom,
threw up his hands and ran away.
It happened that a rumour spread
of a Goryeo celadon vase in that old house.
Who knows, maybe someone had already taken it,
leaving behind just the muttering within.
Creepers have grown so wild in the garden
someone could easily be lost and bound…
Dr Jang Gi-ryeo
‘Even now, when it rains
I leave the window open
lest I miss the sound
of footsteps
as you approach in the rain.’
Ever since the 4 January retreat in 1951,
he lived in the South,
husband of a divided couple
in a divided country,
never taking a second wife,
sleeping alone in a simple cot.
He settled in Busan and established a modest hospital.
Nobody was ever sent away;
sick and poor,
all received treatment and his loving touch.
For that, he became the model for the protagonist
of Yi Gwang-su’s novel Love.
It was to meet Jang Gi-ryeo, that holy figure,
like big brother meeting younger brother,
like younger brother meeting big brother,
that the great Quaker teacher Ham Seok-heon,
using other errands as his excuse,
so often travelled down to Busan from Seoul.
Three-headed Hawk
There was once a hawk that had three heads:
with one it looked forward,
with one it looked behind,
and one it turned
to look up and down.
Soaring high into the sky, way up,
it took aim at all of Joseon’s corrupt officials.
That’s him, and him, and
there he is.
It dived with sharp eyes glaring,
tore at them with its ferocious beak.
In the name of the people,
it hunted out all the grasping officials
so prevalent in the 400 years of the Joseon Era,
sparing but the two hundred men who were clean-handed.
Wondrous!
When the people’s most ardent wishes and rancour
ran to the high heavens,
the three-headed hawk went flying up.
Kim Geun-tae
During the 1970s he never stuck his head above water.
While infiltrating this or that dark, dank factory
here and there in Incheon,
he earned several vocational certificates.
He gladly threw away his diplomas
from Seoul National University’s Business College and other such.
In the factories he was a respectable Homo Faber.
Face like a white candle,
face like a white goat,
but in his brown eyes
a single unwavering resolve