The war began at the year’s edge,
a sudden hinge where ice and ember meet,
from the opening of January to the first green note of Spring.

Who knows when the killing ground learned to wear the shape of a playground’s lawn?

Tears braided themselves into brown rivers across the faces of parents,
daring the road from eye to cheek with memory.

In those days when waters crowded tight,
when the sea pressed its teeth against Persia and Arabia,
the Strait of Hormuz stood as a gateway among nations—
a theater where kingdoms rose and fell
as capriciously as the tide.

Lo, an oil ship glided through the passage,
heavy as a fallen idol,
its hull stacked with the earth’s wealth,
its shadow staining waters
that once bore the caravans of Hormuz, that island‑kingdom,
the red fortress that kept faith with prayers to long‑gone powers
and the cannons of far‑flung empires.

Beside the vessel, sorrow walked,
for so many lives had been claimed by these depths—
sailors swallowed by storms,
merchants erased by war,
names slipping from memory as stones are worn smooth by the sea.

Anger rose, a desert wind,
unyielding and bright.
War trapped the narrow place,
binding the strait with a throat‑tight cord.
Breath failed before it could be spoken,
and the waters groaned beneath the weight
of humanity’s relentless striving.

Yet even there, in the throat of constriction,
among ancient cliffs and the hum of engines new and old,
a sign appeared.

On the first day of Spring, a subtle glow arose in my chest—
not the lacquered splendor of armies,
nor the pomp of rulers,
but a small, stubborn light
that darkness cannot swallow.
It shone like the dawn on oil‑dark waters,
a whisper of possibility beyond war’s reach.

The seasons, the book says, open what men have closed.
Beyond the bottleneck, the sea loosens its grip;
beyond pain, a future unscrolls itself.
If the ship endures, it will navigate toward open waters again.
So will we, in time.

Thus speaks Hormuz on the day of Spring:
the narrow is not the final line,
sorrow not the ultimate sentence,
and from suffering’s pressure, a broader mercy shall rise.

– TaeHun Yoon, 3/20/2026