Glass
Kim Hyesoon | Poetry
translated by Cindy Juyoung Ok
On me
you leave no handprints
Over me
you hold no sway
but
as if only all your shadows slipped
On me
you cannot even unload your weight
Neither body temperature
nor whip reaches
To me
even your sweet voice does not reach
There are no hot tears either
But I
know how to shatter at once
In the morning sunlight
ten million strands
twinkling
I know how to cut out all your eyeballs
and fly away in an instant
Kim Hyesoon has published fourteen Korean poetry collections and won most major literary awards in South Korea. Her international honors include the Griffin Poetry Prize in Canada and the Cikada Prize in Sweden, and her books have been translated into several languages. Kim was a creative writing professor at the Seoul Institute of the Arts for many years and has a Ph.D. in Korean Literature from Konkuk University.
Cindy Juyoung Ok is the author of Ward Toward (Yale University Press, 2024) and a fellow at the Kenyon Review, MacDowell, and Literature Translation Institute of Korea. Her translations of Kim Hyesoon’s poems appear in The Hopkins Review, Asymptote, and Copper Nickel.