Walter K. Lew
Walter K. Lew es un poeta americano coreano y erudito que es autor de Treadwinds: Poems and Intermedia Works (Wesleyan University Press, 2002), ganador del premio Asian American literaria de Poesía. Actualmente es profesor en la Universidad de Miami.
Dejando Seúl: 1953
Tenemos que enterrar las urnas
Mi madre y yo. Tratamos de dejarlas en un cuarto trasero,
Atraídas por una lámpara, y correr
Pero ellos aterrizaron aquí, detrás nuestro, en la entrada principal.
Es la sexta hora, inicios del invierno, frío negro:
Sólo, del otro lado de las puertas de papel de arroz,
El ondol amarillo de flores calientes en el piso
Sigue cálido. Veo las azules
Lámparas en la pista de aterrizaje, el avión brillante.
Tras su último paso, mi madre, desorganizada
Como de costumbre, ha ideado una torpe cuerda y una pala
Para enterrar las urnas. Me pregunto en voz alta
Cómo ella se convirtió en doctora. Vete, ella decía,
Ve con tu padre: él tampoco
Sabe qué es lo que está pasando. Mira,
Mi padre está esperando en la pista de aterrizaje en un capote
Del ejército de Estados Unidos. Ha perdido su sombrero, a su padre
También lo perdió, y está fumando Lucky’s como loco…
Nos agarramos de entre las hierbas altas y el viento
Que comienza a correr por debajo de nosotros como un río de hielo.
Está nevando. Lloramos, ¿por el frío
O por qué? Solamente décadas
Después de eso, tapando las brillantes y frías jarras,
Descubro que éstas contienen todo lo que permite
El dominio que mi padre tiene sobre ella.
Versión: Adalberto García López
Leaving Seoul: 1953
We have to bury the urns,
Mother and I. We tried to leave them in a back room,
Decoyed by a gas lamp, and run out
But they landed behind us here, at the front gate.
It is 6th hour, early winter, black cold:
Only, on the other side of the rice-paper doors
The yellow ondol stone-heated floors
Are still warm. I look out to the blue
Lanterns along the runway, the bright airplane.
Off the back step, Mother, disorganized
As usual, has devised a clumsy rope and shovel
To bury the urns. I wonder out loud
how she ever became a doctor.
Get out , she says Go to your father: he too
Does not realize what is happening . You see,
Father is waiting at the airfield in a discarded US Army
Overcoat. He has lost his hat, lost
His father, and is smoking Lucky’s like crazy. . .
We grab through the tall weeds and wind
That begin to shoot under us like river ice.
It is snowing. We are crying, from the cold
Or what? It is only decades
Later that, tapping the cold, glowing jars,
I find they contain all that has made
The father have dominion over hers.
4/7/85
Children shone in the front gate and put their hands together in the
demon pavilion.
Then they went up red-dusted steps toward the granite stupa, where they
didn’t hesitate to bow with their mothers.
Thick white candles with reverse swastikas and rows of images on the
ascending plinths of stone.
I crouched under the temple, in the cool shadow, by the outdoor Nestlé‘s
coffee dispenser—and was aroused when two women strode by in russet
hanbok
“Color of the dharma’s robes," said monk Sôgu suddenly beside me.
I followed him down the hill and sat on a log. There was a small lake and
I was calm enough at last. . .to listen to my new uncle conduct the
neighborhood’s Bodhisattva orchestra, seated on folding chairs in the mud
beside it.
.