Lumberjack Diary
By Lee Young-ju
Translated By Jae Kim
I didn’t know how to draw this myth whose beginning is filled with darkness, so I drew a house on a blank page. The universe doesn’t have any use for doors of course. We wanted to build a house because everything was open. Since we’re fragile, we can’t make sense of a place where backward is forward and up and down mean little. To be natural means to be able to show ourselves, of our own accord. As nothing but shadows molded out of light and darkness, we can neither touch sorrows nor embrace joys. As we are, we can’t do anything. After sending you the Bible verse that says everything turns upside down in the moments before the world ends, I erased the confessions I’d written all over my desk. In this vastness, I doubt any signal could reach you. They say a disaster is a star being destroyed. Stardust will fall and show itself on its own. The old ones, who could touch and feel shapeless things, grieved when they saw the stardust. We put up a roof and pray that the souls of those who disappeared visit us. We pray they rest their shining bodies on the roof and prepare a large pot of porridge for us. Is the tragedy impossible to explain because this is how it manifests itself? Using a long saw, we cut down a tree. Let’s make a frame. We’re shadows slipping in through the window. We let the hot red bean porridge drip to the ground.
Translated from the Korean
Source: Poetry (April 2021)