[Ghazals]
The Time of the Cemetery


By Wolran Kim



When I passed the cemetery near my house at dusk,
the open time was written like this, “Dawn to Dusk.”

If there were no construction delays on the road,
I would not read the other world’s time, dawn to dusk.

Time has piled up without any retreat or advance.
The dead copy the living people’s time as dawn to dusk.

Rising and falling, the sun is more accurate than Arabic numerals.
The ghosts stroll through the graves between dawn and dusk.

I have tried to figure out the time from beginning to end.
But a simple sign hanging like a fallen leaf is so clear: Dawn to Dusk.

Why do people want to stay together even beyond life?
Should I be buried over there like them around dusk?

Should I exhume and bury my time in a deep burial ground too?
It is 6pm now; I am on the road between dawn and dusk.

I really don’t want to see my name on the epitaph.
Was I born before the sun rising harshly, not from dawn to dusk?

Short-spoken people keep secrets over the rusty Iron Gate.
Their shadows grow from the west to the east, dawn to dusk.

The time on the ground runs toward a red sky in the twilight.
The time of the grave hangs as a low voice, dawn to dusk.

A stop sign from construction changes to “slow.”
A navigator shows me my time of departure and arrival, dawn to dusk.