Jang Jin-sung has been chosen by Poetry Parnassus to represent the DPRK (North Korea), as part of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad. He is one of nine Asia Literary Review here
News:
Latest news BBC World Service Newshour
Huffington Post
translated by Shirley Lee
Jang Gil-su
July 2012 - the author reads his poems in London
Press PLAY and click bottom right for full screen
Executioner 사형수
Wherever people are gathered
there are gunshots to be heard.
Today, as the crowd looks on
a man is executed.
‘You are not to feel any sympathy!
Even when he’s dead, we must kill him again!’
The loudspeakers’ words are interrupted.
Bang! Bang!
The rest of the message is delivered.
Why is it that today
the crowd is silent?
His crime: to steal a bag of rice.
His sentence: ninety bullets in his heart.
His occupation: farmer.
The Journey is Hard but We Go Forth with Laughter!
This country brings us to tears.
That’s why we live by a slogan:
‘Go forth with laughter!’
Not any old laughter
but Official Laughter.
We must laugh to a slogan.
Forget about happiness
Live by the slogan!
The laughter of love!
The laughter of loyalty!
The laughter of faith!
So what if I starve?
So what if I die?
Today, I drank only saliva. Yet I
go forth with laughter!
Jong-il turns his face from us.
He lives for victory.
He flashes gold when he laughs but
our laughter is ugly.
Still, we must respect our superiors. We must
go forth with laughter!
We flash the yellow of stains as we laugh.
We are bastards when we laugh.
Ha Ha Ha
How will they close my eyelids?
How will they keep my mouth shut?
I will be laughing so hard!
Ha Ha Ha
For Us, Life
Every morning
when I wake
I shake my brother
to and fro – his lungs are weak.
I know that Chul next door
went off to sleep for good.
Whenever mother is late
I tune my ears
to the lightest breeze.
I hold my breath
to count the hours.
I know that our water-lady
cut her own life short.
I know there are many paths in life
but just one choice for us:
to carry on.
I Am Selling My Daughter for 100 Won
She was desolate.
‘I Am Selling My Daughter for 100 Won.’
With that placard on her neck
with her daughter by her side
the woman standing in the market place –
she was mute.
People looked at the daughter being sold
and the mother who was selling.
The people cast their curses at them
but keeping her eyes downcast
she was tearless.
Even when the daughter
wrapped herself
in her mother’s skirt
shouting, screaming
that her mother was dying
the woman kept her lips
tight and trembled –
she did not know how to be grateful.
‘I’m not buying the daughter
I want to buy the mother.’
That soldier came by
with a 100 won note in his hand.
The woman who ran off with the money,
she was a mother.
With the money
she got for her daughter
she bought a loaf of bread
and put a chunk of bread
in her daughter’s mouth
as they said goodbye.
‘Forgive me,’ she cried.
She was desolate.
The Dreaming Child
What could he have seen
in his dreams
that he ran out into the night?
What could he have seen
in his dreams
that he did not fear the gunshot?
What could he have seen
in his dreams
that he held it so tight as he died?
The dreaming child, dying,
would not let go of
a sweet corn cob.
Note: In the autumn, after a year’s toil, the soldiers came to guard the crop. Anyone who stole corn was deemed reactionary and executed on the spot.
