Ghosts appear in many plays. A long time ago the actor who played the Ghost had to get rid of his body. Only his voice was left. It must have been before someone wearing a white sheet took on the role of the Ghost. The person playing the Ghost had to be a ghost, just as he who plays Macbeth must be Macbeth. The actor killed himself to play the Ghost. He did not realize that once his body was gone, he would lose his voice. He shouted, but no lines were left on stage. He moved, but no action remained on stage. But the audience was listening to his voice. By thinking of the actor who had become a ghost, they themselves became haunted houses. A performance that can only be done in the thoughts of the audience. A performance only made possible by death. He spoke in the audience's thoughts, cried in their thoughts, and moved in their thoughts. A world of lines and texts unfolded. None of the spectators who had made their thoughts a stage could leave the theater. Crying in their thoughts, laughing in their thoughts, shuddering in their thoughts, they couldn't distinguish day and night. They didn't realize that their lives were all plays. They didn't know that the Ghost was their thoughts.

- Sin Yong-Mok (translated by Brother Anthony)

A BUTTERFLY GOES TO A BUTTERFLY

The cobweb is the butterfly’s body. It’s the flap of wings drawn in the

void by a butterfly that passed through the spider’s stomach, the void

a butterfly gifted to the spider, a rice bowl handed back after eating.

The wind nods and permits the void’s fluttering earthquake made as

a butterfly calls a butterfly. By its blazing impact, sunlight says that if

you dig down into the bottom of hunger, then longing emerges like

a stone. Between spider and cobweb, there stands the butterfly’s life.

Something passing through the spider’s body, standing as a cobweb,

that’s the story of my mother who hates my older brother for resembling

my father. That’s the reason why each time love comes to me, it arrives

with a changed face. A butterfly goes to a butterfly and shakes the

world. Shaken, it attains cold-heartedness.

A DANGEROUS BIBLIOGRAPHY

I’m feeding a cow grass and waiting for it to turn to horn.

The clouds’ march lasted a long time.
The houses had front doors like socks
that were like the weather that yesterday stripped off

and left behind. While I was living in that house

the only thing I knew was a secret

and the only thing I didn’t know was a rumor – and therefore

silence!

After putting on the mask I took from the mirror

I waited for the mirror to become my skin.

Wearing a scissors-brand mask, every day the calendar

was marched into yesterday.

The scissors gave me grounds for suspicion.
By cutting masks out of the shadows

the calendar pages flipped in the mirror.

That house was filthy. So many footsteps.
The cloud’s left and right foot
and the partially clipped-out eyes and noses—but, nevertheless

silence!

Whenever the house was opened

the front door turned inside out

and the white cow reflected
as a black cow in the mirror.
Just as the weather comes wearing the cloud’s socks

I feed the cow grass and wait for flowers to blossom on its horn.

PUTTING NOODLES INTO BROTH WITH A RED FACE

Water’s shoes that water wears to walk in.
Water’s footprints printed on the water.
Water borne on water’s back and water embraced by water.

The red wrapper, that’s water’s bottom
and beneath the wrapper, that’s water’s exterior.

I put noodles into broth.

In the bowl from which hunger, robed in a body of white steam, rises

the noodles are rainwater’s gray hair.
What labor is that dangling from every chopstick?

The Gungdong bus terminal.

Foreign workers with red faces

wait for the far side of the Earth.

Rain falls.
In life’s prison
fingernails made of air are being scraped by yearning!

The rain gathers.

The Gungdong bus terminal.

Foreign workers with red faces
are eating up this side of the Earth.

In the bowl where memories are twisted and lifted as white noodles

streaks of rain, the heart’s white hair.
What name is that raised on every chopstick?

I put noodles into broth.

The afterimages of faces rising on faces
and the shadows of faces remaining on faces.

Faces fixed on faces, and faces
overlapping faces in the heart, the face’s floors

and, in memories, the faces’ exteriors.

EXPLODED SPRING

I did not explode. And as nothing has hit my temples

I have not exploded.

A balloon running away
with a tail hanging on its wind hole.

There’s no battlefront in my direction

just an endlessly receding backline.

In any corner I look are the collapsed things that used to be bodies.

I look at things that once were gunpowder.

There’s no direction in spring’s battlefront

just an endlessly approaching hollow.

As nothing has hit the temples of spring
spring is running covered with balloons made of light.

Fat targets are smiling.

AN ALLEY WITH FALLING MAGNOLIA BLOSSOM

I came along an alley where a bread bag was blowing about.

Who had eaten the contents and thrown it away?
Someone with the contents inside them, so becoming the husk

the person had torn open the bag and eaten the bread.

My body, once it had turned into a bread bag
swept the alley to brighten it up.
(After tripping over a magnolia tree’s empty trunk

my body was stabbed by the red graffiti
on a redevelopment fence and turned inside out)

Bloated, my body soared high into the sky and ripped somewhere.

A child kicked at it in passing. A rat ran away covered with it.

Someone ripped the spring here. White on the dusty ground.

Spring came pouring down, stamping

until someone devoured it completely.

After devouring it, that person became spring’s husk.

Became a bag.

The wind was my bag. The wind, the void with its body ripped

somewhere

came along an alley where a bread bag was blowing about.

FLASHLIGHT

Is a circle born leftward?

Or is it born rightward?

Does the home of a leftward-born circle belong on the right?

Where does the right begin?

Is someone who draws a circle its parent?

How many circles have I drawn?

Am I a sinner to them?

I went walking leftward, so why do I arrive on the right?

Why keep drawing circles?
What’s circular?

What’s circular?

When the flashlight beam pursuing darkness shone on my face I was caught in the only circle.

Rain falls only inside the circle.

We always undergo exploitation of the most precious thing we own.

You were alone, and I was poor, of course
and above all, because we were young

everything is destined to grow old.

But the darkness could never be caught.
Every time the flashlight shone out
it ostentatiously retreated outside the circle of light.

Rain falls only inside the circle

I had barely begun to scream.

There are rainy nights because our sorrow is still young.

From the next day on
the sun hung in the only sky
like a plate immersed in a slop pail.

From the next day on
I thought about circles I could smash and circles I could not smash

but the night we first met was still young.

No rain can ever wash away sorrow.

You were alone, and I was poor, of course

when the hand inserted into the circle lifted my chin

my face was already broken.

NIGHT

A dark man cuts off my head and carries it away wrapped in a cloth. The old cloth is pierced with holes.

Through the holes, I look down at the lights of a distant village.

One day a pair of lovers find the cloth dropped in the village and look

up at the dark man through the holes.

They each take turns setting a foot on my head.

FEARFUL SORROW

No snake can know what it feels like to sit down and rest

what it feels like to sleep lying down.

When I flop down onto the floor
when I collapse and roll about the floor

as though my limbs have vanished

is something no snake can know.

The reason why the frog’s croaking
suddenly stops in a pond after a lotus leaf opens

revealing a night star

is the reason the light suddenly goes out in that house

like a snake passing by.

Born in Geochang, South Gyeongsang Province, Korea, Sin Yong-Mok received a new writers award in 2000 and has published six collections of poetry, a novel, and two volumes of prose essays. A recent selected book of his poems, Concealed Words translated by Brother Anthony came out with Black Ocean in 2022.

Brother Anthony of Taizé has lived in Korea since 1980 and has published over fifty volumes of English translations of contemporary Korean poetry in addition to a considerable number of translations of Korean fiction and other books related to Korea. He is an emeritus professor at Sogang University and a chair professor at Dankook University and president emeritus of the Royal Asiatic Society Korea Branch.

Sin Yong-Mok Surreal-Absurd Sampler