My Father's Lamp

By Hong Young Chul

Translated by Rodney E. Tyson & Hong Eun-Taek

The Quarterly Review: Poetry & Criticism, 4(2), p. 209. Summer 2001.

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My father walks toward me
Holding a lamp in the darkness
My father walks toward me
At my bedside, the pitter-patter sound of falling rain
My father is anxious that the lamp might get wet
The sound of his light footsteps carefully coming toward me
After a while, my father puts down the lamp
And sits upright inside my breast
My father sits just like that
In the end, without a word
Having put down a lamp

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The Quarterly Review: Poetry & Criticism | Curriculum Vitae