I Ask a Little Cuckoo* What Daybreak Is By Shim Jae Hui
Translated by Rodney E. Tyson & Hong Eun-Taek
The Quarterly Review: Poetry & Criticism, 3(2), pp. 249-250. Summer 2000.
When each tree bears the burdens of time
From which branches can birds sing?
When birds cross over from evening branches curved like a new moon
To branches of the last day of the month at dawn
Those wandering light bodies of time
What on earth are they? As I wake up and
Count the tree rings, sad like trees in a marsh,
I hear this at dawn:
Hut-ttok-tto-ok, hut-ttok-tto-ok**
Into what does the sound drive a wedge?
The sound of a little cuckoo before daybreakWhen the day breaks today
I'll make my way out to complete my life's purpose
And say in the end that my home for this night was the road
But as for this half darkness I haven't learned about yet
I have no way to express it at all
They say that life merely runs deep or is worn out
And darkness and light are not different from one another
The deep blue sound of newspapers being delivered, that distant sound of buses passing
Solid as it is, I can't touch it
Although rain comes in the sunlight at times
And somewhere the scent of mushrooms is deep on dead trees
Can I never say exactly what it is while I am alive?
Darkness and light, this I don't know about
So I ask a little cuckoo what daybreak is
_______________
*The bird referred to in this poem is called sojjuksae in Korean. It is similar to a "lesser cuckoo" or a "little cuckoo." The name of the bird has also sometimes been translated as "nightingale."
**The sound usually attributed to this bird is so-jjuk so-jjuk. However, the sound it is making here, hut-ttok-tto-ok hut-ttok-tto-ok, is intended to remind readers of the Korean expression, hut-ttokttok, which is used to refer to a person who pretends to be smarter or better informed than he or she really is, a "know-it-all."
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