Chŏlla Lass

by Lee Yong-ak.

Translated by Brother Anthony of Taize (An Sonjae)

*From Brother Anthony’s online collection of his translations. Used with permission.

You grew up kissing soft clams with colorful shells,

The sound of the wind and of tigers howling are not so fearful now.

Beneath this feeble lamp I long to drink down the cares crowding in like fog,

but I feel as though some appalling news will come rushing in,

in this Manchurian tavern where I cannot trust thick walls or neighbors.

 

I have come harboring all kinds of curses.

I have come through fierce blizzards.

Little lass,

as I wander down the shady woodland lanes that lie in your breast,

pour wine, pour to the brim daintily

and steep it softly in your story of destitution, please.

 

You crossed the Tuman River three months ago, you say?

Surely every hill you crossed, mile after mile after mile was aflame with scarlet leaves then?

Still, you must have hidden your face in your skirt, lonely and sorrowful?

You must have wept like a crane for two days and nights

as the train went hurrying as if in the clouds, the windows must have misted over?

 

Seemingly intoxicated by the gentle breaking of waves,

you sometimes smile a frozen smile, silently showing dimples,

little lass,

about to weep, about to weep, never weeping Chŏlla lass,

let me summon out-of-season spring with a few words in your dialect.

Go back for just a moment to your homeland,

your pink pigtail-ribbon with its dirty finger marks flapping in the wind.

 

As soon as the icy road grows light

I shall be setting briskly off across the snow-swept plains

I shall vanish without so much as a song.

I shall vanish without a trace.

 

Lee Yong-ak (1914-1971) was born in North Hamkyeong Province in North Korea on the border with China. He was educated in Japan, spent time as part of the Korean Diaspora in Manchuria and Siberia, was imprisoned by former president Syngman Rhee and lived in the North after the armistice. In this poem, Lee connects the furthest northeastern province of Korea with the furthest southwestern province, in imagining a meeting with the “Chŏlla Lass.”