Day Forty-nine
The warm buoyant breaths don’t miss you
The winds that have left for reincarnation before you, that brush against the lips of your childhood don’t miss you
The winter, the woman’s ice heart, dead from sickness, drifting away in the infinite blue sky with thin needles stuck all over it doesn’t miss you
The leaves blow away, leaving their prints on the frozen river and
the one-hundred, two-hundred-story high buildings crumble all at once and
the spectacles with spectacles, shoes with shoes, lips with lips, eyebrows with eyebrows, footprints with footprints swept into a huge drawer don’t miss you
The river is frozen eighty centimeters deep, a tank passes over it, and the fish beneath the ice don’t miss you
The dog tied to the electric pole in front of the tobacco shop for fourteen years doesn’t miss you
While the big wind takes away thousands of women dead from madness
the sound of the yous of your whole life, your hair falling
all of the winter landscape, wailing and wielding its whip doesn’t miss you
Thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of snow flurries don’t miss you
Don’t descend all over the world, howling, murmuring, searching for your snowman-like body buried in the snow, don’t miss you and say I love you or whatever as if unfolding a beautifully folded letter
Don’t miss you just because you’re not you and I’m the one who’s really you
Don’t miss you as you write and write for forty-nine days with an inkless pen
Translated by Don Mee Choi.
