70) The History of Shoes

     

       Wolran Kim

 

A map without road signs hangs over his bending back

When sunset sits on every shelf of the shoe chemicals

When he rams down a big hobnail on a shoe like a horseshoe

His pastspreads on thefoot pad, and his future drives

He steals and sneaks the past of passersby

When he puts bond on with bare hands in a black apron used at a butcher’s

His lost path drags out of it

Stranger’s ways peel off after soaking in warm water for half an hour

People made shoe-boats with sails tracking the Pacific wind in the Greater East Asia War

People made shoes with dead soldiers’ boots from the Korean War

People made shoes with bald tires after

Under his tilted black beret, his left eye that lost sight from a sharp gimlet

Is covered by a blind past

Shoes without eyes read maps as braille, and give him new eyes

Both synthetic and natural leather under the same sewing machine

Are the same cloudy or bright day that he should fix

When he sees a customer who wants to reform orange enamel shoes to black

In those days, even a shoe maker buys factory shoes

After bankrupt from a sushi bar and bakery, I finally returned to this shoe store

The ways he ruined and wishes to erase want to be reformed

Time is carved on the magic board, like young rock

The heel of time always frays from the outside

And it was enough to bend the spine of awhole life

Whenever he moves his weight with a hidden splay-footed walk

He sprains his ankle of life

The origin of the alley from the front to the back, he dreams

Every step of youth that is thrown away to the corner of an unroofed yard

Cranes his head on the dead end of twilight years on the causeway

In a 35 sq. ft. store that hasn’t any neon sign

Strangers’ unpaved roads are improving from the elaborate hands

Accumulating white dusts of time are lucid on the shined shoes