너는 어떻게 내게 왔던가?
오기는 왔던가?
마른 흙을 일으키는 빗방울처럼?
빗물 고인 웅덩이처럼?
젖은 나비 날개처럼?
숲을 향해 너와 나란히 걸었던가?
꽃그늘에서 입을 맞추었던가?
우리의 열기로 숲은 좀더 붉어졌던가?
그때 너는 들었는지?
수천 마리 벌들이 일제히 날개 터는 소리를?
그 황홀한 소음을 무어라 불러야 할까?
사랑은 소음이라고?
네가 웃으며 그렇게 말했던가?
정말 그 숲이 있기는 있었던가?
그런데 웅웅거리던 벌들은 다 어디로 갔지?
꽃들은, 너는, 어디에 있지?
나는 아직 나에게 돌아오지 못했는데?
Born in 1966,
Ra Heeduk holds Masters and Doctoral degrees from the Department of Korean Literature, Yonsei University. In 1989 she won the JoongAng Ilbo Shinchun Literary Award and began her literary career. From 2001 to 2018 she was a professor of Creative Writing at Chosun University, and since 2019 has been a professor in the Department of Creative Writing at Seoul National University of Science and Technology. In 2012, she was a visiting professor at SOAS (Centre for Korean Studies) University of London, and she has served on the editorial advisory boards of the journals Creative Writing and Criticism and The Green Review. She has published a great many collections of poetry, to broad acclaim, and her poetry and prose have been translated into English, French, German, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Farsi, Vietnamese and Burmese. She has given presentations and poetry readings at international creative workshops, readings and symposia, including the International Creative Writing Program (IWP) in Iowa, the Korean Studies Centre at UC Berkeley, the International Poetry Festival in Costa Rica, the Qinghai Lake International Poetry Festival in China, the Korea-China Writers’ Conference, the Korean-Turkish Literature Symposium, the Auvergne-Vivare Ligon Poetry and Literature Festival in France, the Beijing International Poetry Festival in China, and the Taiwan International Poetry Festival.
