• Mirage Ocean III

Bare hands.

Into water the size of a heart, the sound of undressing slips down the ridge where clothes once hung in the back.

Even the void is not enough— beyond trembling shoulders, a cry.

Only one, pouring into the widow’s courtyard, a dry monsoon!

In the dusk-swallowed swamp where the boat has left, winter unravels, thread by thread— only the path lies fallen.

© TaeHun Yoon, 1980

(Note: After the May 18 Gwangju Uprising and pro-democracy movement in 1980, I gave voice to the pain of life under Chun Doo-hwan’s military dictatorship.)