Until the Peonies Bloom

 

Spring took its time in coming last year, only to disappear just as quickly. So before the arrival of spring, as I awaited the season amid the harshness of February last year, I went over maps in my mind, from Jindo Island to Bogil Island, and then over again from Jeju Island to Ganghwa Island. It was a map of the heart, one that I had to draw myself, slowly, painstakingly. It was not that I felt a longing for the southern sea. Indeed, that would have been torture, having to witness the traces of suffering, the twisting of history. Tracing the Korean coast is like finding some bloodstained determination to resist within us. And so I went to Gangjin. I felt I had to see the home of "Yeongrang" Kim Yun-sik, the poet who wrote "Until the Peonies Bloom" and dominated one part of my adolescent years. 

 

 A tidy thatched-roof house, a bamboo forest, a simple soy-jar terrace, a well (how long it had been!), a cozy veranda -- it called to mind long-ago memories of my mother's home, where I went with her when I was five or six. Where can I find the scent of those old memories now? The poem was carved into a large stone in the yard, and I recited its words to myself. Suddenly -- suddenly, those poetic words were conveyed each by each into my heart, like the words of a poem you are reading for the first time. The soul of the peony, the spirit of the peony had returned to me. And so I made up my mind that I would depict the despair of those splendid flowers when spring and May came around, the sorrow of losing one's country, the blooming of the dazzling and despairing peonies as they soothe the emptiness of that waiting. At this moment, the sorrow of a century is in progress. My spring will not come as long as the division persists.

■ Heryun Kim