Thursday Poem

Lamenta: 423

“peacekeeping troops”
“tanks beneath the windows”

The inside of someone else’s dwelling visible — a table and some chairs.

You start to count one, two, three, four . . . until the explosion is near your neighborhood.
You can guess the position of mortar by this counting and try to find a safe place.

If the windows are gone, weak plastic is taped up but the strong wind comes and we stay
awake.

In this South Cholla Province where all vehicles had been confiscated, we resorted to
walking, the method of travel of the Yi Dynasty. We reverted back 300 years.

Kwangju, 1980

It’s the same to be in the house, at the shelter or anywhere. There is no safe place.
When we have no electricity, we are sitting in the dark and we know what life looked like
before Christ.

Sarajevo, 1992

by Myung Mi Kim
from Commons
University of California Press, 2002
.