Like the shaved head of a recruit sick with syphilis,
mountains are swept by whitish snowflakes.
From an old pine tree, a snowball
falls, and the rice flour covers the red
nuts of evergreens. On the snow-pile
I have a long-held piss and a hole is bored
as thick as a turnip. Do you remember
the festival pig spilling warm blood
through the hole punched in its neck?
Oh, without the body, the hole wouldn’t have existed.
LEE Seong-bok (b. 1952) was born in Sangju, Kyungsang Province. He graduated from Seoul National University, majoring in French literature. Poetry collections When Will the Rolling Stone Awake 1977), Namhae geumsan (1986), End of That Summer (1990), Your Suffering Cannot Turn One Single Leaf Green (2001), Ah, Mouthless Things (2003), Ripple Patterns on the Moon’s Forehead (2003). Vastly expanding the sphere of meaning to permit endless questions to be raised, his poetry makes us rethink of the fundamental relationship that lies beneath life. In his recent poetry book, Ah, Mouthless Things, the poet touches the beings and things existing on the fringe of the world in very sensitive words He. currently teaches French Language and Literature at Gyemyeong University.
