Author: Park Jang-ho
Translated by: Brother Anthony of Taizé
Publisher: Asia Publishers, 2022
Original title: 글자만 남은 아침 영문판, 2022
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I opened my eyes Rhodopsin had disintegrated. He wasn’t there and the candle was weeping alone. I missed him who had disappeared. Time transitioned into a story, and I saw the shadow of a moving tree outside the window and the feathers of a bird flapping its wings and flying from a branch. It was the eyes of the leopard that saw the bird leave the world of the inner skin holding in its beak the story it had shared with a candle. People are lonely because they have those eyes. The reason why a tree falls in love is because of the scent of roses that revolves around its body. A morning of the epidermis, where one and two leopards change places and move away. The book of time containing all those stories.
From “Book of time covered in an epidermis”
I still don’t understand the poems, I don’t understand the words, but the wolves will sit here and leave their teeth marks for a long time to come. I will underline sentences that I find attractive, or leave my own interpretations, leaving new tooth marks on the page behind. Convinced that our individual questions are the only way to read these poems more deeply, I return to the first page of the collection, still thrilled by what they say, eager to read from beginning to end once again.
Lim Ji-hoon (Literary Critic)
Source: Kyobo bookstore