Story—Late Summer or Early Fall

^{translated from the Korean by Stine An}

Late summer or early fall—memories are unreliable Father was lying on his side In the swaying spiderweb, no spider could be seen The spider is hiding, why don’t you try touching the spiderweb But I am afraid The sound of wooden floorboards creaking Withering up for decades, Father rolled over to his other side And when he did, his scent, his warmth Just as I hadn’t touched the spiderweb, I didn’t dare touch my father’s back And so, neither the spider nor my father moved Why couldn’t I grasp that the space would be empty If you can’t see it, is it hiding The shadow that creeps and crawls toward the door to escape The light that casts and gathers the shadow under the gap—I’ll grab its hand so it won’t run away Memories of late summer or early fall are unreliable, and I am still afraid

이야기─늦여름 아니면 초가을 

늦여름 아니면 초가을 기억은 믿을 수 없다 아버지는 모로 누워 계셨다 한들거리는 거미줄 거미는 보이지 않았다 거미는, 숨어 있단다 거미줄을 건드려보렴 하지만 나는 무섭다 마루가 삐걱거리는 소리 수십 년째 말라가면서 아버지는 돌아누웠다 그럴 때의 냄새 그럴 때의 온기 거미줄을 건드리지 않은 것처럼 아버지의 등에도 손을 댈 수가 없었다 그러니 거미도 아버지도 움직이지 않았다 비어 있을 거라는 가정은 어째서 하지 않았던 것일까 보이지 않으면 숨어 있는 것일까 엉금엉금 기어 문 쪽으로 달아나는 그림자 문 아래 틈으로 밀어 넣었다가 거두는 빛의 손 잡아야지 도망칠 수 없도록 늦여름 아니면 초가을의 기억은 믿을 수가 없어 나는 아직도 무섭고

Copyright © 2024 by Yoo Heekyung and Stine An. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on September 5, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets. 

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“Time brings forth space. Space brings forth life, and life brings forth incidents, while the incident brings forth memory. Memory, in other words, the story, is placed ahead of everything else. Late summer or early fall—it’s within this time, [which] might not exist in our world, that my dead father and I become born. In the same space, in different memories, we quiver. We sense one another. In the spiderweb woven from presence and absence. Sometimes in fear and, other times, in tenderness. This is something [that is] only possible [within] the story of a poem.”
—Yoo Heekyung, translated from the Korean by Stine An