Kim Hyesoon

After you’ve gone don’t go, don’t

After you’ve come don’t come, don’t

When you depart, they close your eyes, put your hands together and cry

        don’t go, don’t go

But when you say open the door, open the door, they say don’t come, don’t

        come

They glue a paper doll onto a bamboo stick and say don’t come, don’t come

They throw your clothes into the fire and say don’t come, don’t come

That’s why you’re footless

wingless

yet all you do is fly

unable to land

You’re visible even when you hide

You know everything even without a brain

You feel so cold

even without a body

That’s why this morning the nightgown hiding under the bed

is sobbing quietly to itself

Water collects in your coffin

You’ve already left the coffin

Your head’s imprint on the moon pillow

Your body’s imprint on the cloud blanket

So after you’ve gone don’t go, don’t

So after you’ve come don’t come, don’t

After you’ve gone don’t go, don’t
After you’ve come don’t come, don’t

When you depart, they close your eyes, put your hands together
    and cry don’t go, don’t go
But when you say open the door, open the door, they say don’t
      come, don’t come

They glue a paper doll onto a bamboo stick and say don’t come,
      don’t come
They throw your clothes into the fire and say don’t come, don’t
        come

That’s why you’re footless
wingless

yet all you do is fly
unable to land

You’re visible even when you hide
You know everything even without a brain

You feel so cold
even without a body

That’s why this morning the nightgown hiding under the bed
is sobbing quietly to itself

Water collects in your coffin
You’ve already left the coffin

Your head’s imprint on the moon pillow
Your body’s imprint on the cloud blanket

So after you’ve gone don’t go, don’t
So after you’ve come don’t come, don’t

The dead without faces

run out like patients

when the door of the intensive care unit opens

carrying pouches of heart, pouches of urine

The dead running toward the path to the underworld

turn into stone pillars when they look back and their eyes meet

their past

The dead in their sacks look out with eyes brimming with salt

water

The dead become pillars of water as their tears melt their bones

The dead, gone forever, departed before you,

pull amniotic sacs over their heads and get in line to be born

again

and say that they need to learn their mother tongue all over

again

You’re not there when they awake or even when they eat

breakfast

When the dead swarm down the mountain

like children who pour out of the door of the first-grade room

carrying their notebooks and shoe bags

a four-ton bronze bell with a thousand names of the dead

engraved on it dangles from the helicopter

The helicopter flies over a tall mountain to hang the bell at a

temple hidden deep in the mountains

It’s cold, for you’ve come out from a warm body

It’s bright, for you’ve come out from a dark body

It’s lonely, for you’ve lost your shadow

Icy, like soil dug out from a flower pot

Sunny, like the sunlight fish stare at beneath the sheet of ice

Hot, like when lips touch a frozen door knob

Cold again, a bulb-like heart is half frozen

Cold again, as if zero is divided by zero

                  a glass divided by glass

It’s alright, alright

for you’re already dead

The place where you’ve shed yourself, the cold arrived, drained of all the

        red from your body