from “Disorient: Children of the Revolution”

^{for my cousins}

                      “First the meat disappeared from our rations,
                      then the rice, then the barley and millet,
                      then the rations vanished.

                                               _____

                      “We caught croakers, cuttlefish,
                      hauled creels of eelgrass and whip-wrack
                      until soldiers fired warning shots to keep us from the sea:

                      trapped squirrels, snapped sparrows’ necks,
                      stoned snakes if we were quick, dug mud
                      for frogs, dragged dogs from their holes:

                      and when they were wiped out, gnawed rats raw—
                      until they seemed to grow thinner,
                      the parasites in our guts wither, the lice on our scalps starve—

                                              _____

                                                   하루 두 끼만 먹자!
                                                   [LET’S EAT TWO MEALS A DAY!]

                                               _____

                      “We boiled bracken, ground flour for noodles
                      from bean-stalks, stretched it with sawdust,
                      cooked gruel from grass or moss:

                      stripped pine-trees to chew the green inner bark,
                      picked pigweed, hogweed, horseweed, wort,
                      pounded acorns into a pulp—

                                              _____

                                        고난의 행군에서 승리한 기세로 새
                                                   세기의 진격로를 열어나가자!
                                        [LET’S CHARGE FORWARD INTO THE NEW CENTURY
                                                   IN THE SPIRIT OF THE ARDUOUS MARCH!]

                                              _____

                      “Hunt for spilled grain near shipyards and train stations.
                      Poke through cow-shit for corn.
                      Wash well.

                                              _____

                      “Crush grubs.  Suck leeches.   Swallow
                      the worms that would swallow you.
                      Eat anything alive to stay alive.

                                              _____

                     “Snatch scraps of black-market meat.
                      Mother-meat, father-meat, meat of wandering swallows,
                                    meat of tomorrow—?
                      Is-Was.   Eat-Eaten.

                                              _____

                                    오늘을 위해 살지 말고 내일을 위해 살자!
                                    [LET US NOT LIVE FOR TODAY, BUT FOR TOMORROW!]

                                              _____

                      “The children’s skulls swelled, their bellies bloated,
                       their nails fell off,
                       their faces leathered, flesh blackened with infection,

                       hair rusted, eyes ringed with wrinkles
                       as if steel spectacles had been soldered into skin,
                       but what was there to see?

                                               _____

                      “Faster, dig faster! Save face, the aid workers are coming!
                       Hide them, the rotted bodies, lives heaped high as leaves—
                       There is hardly earth enough to bury all the dead.

Copyright © 2021 by Suji Kwock Kim. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 25, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.

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“My parents and grandparents were all born in what is now North Korea. This poem is dedicated to my cousins there. ‘Wandering swallows,’ or kotjebi (꽃제비), literally ‘flower-swallow,’ are homeless children.”
—Suji Kwock Kim