7) Homecoming for a Festive Day
Wolran Kim
The Full Moon Harvest Day in August crosses the Pacific
I go to visit my ancestral graves, buying tickets of memories
When the dried Harvest Moon shines on
The wrinkled smile walks out of the photo album
Whenever I turn the page of time, monitoring the empty room
Their documentary evidence is too thin
Although it was the busiest holiday season
Touching their souls without a solid feeling
“Today is Chuseok*!”
Saying that, I sit by them on a monumental stone
Tear-stained wind beyond the Chupunglyong pass
Make a ceremonial bow
The lunch box that I opened wearing a school uniform
Familiar side dishes are prepared
The hill becomes sour like Kimchi juice
Which soaked my textbook corners
Red juice drops, like seawater
On my mother’s last destination of her autumn travel
Colored with her floral print dress
On the land where she had lived, seeming like late fall
The spring flowers still bloom on that sloping graveyard?
When the homecoming train that fell into the ocean whistles again
As if they know all about the overgrowth
That mixed race children are born in this world
The face of the other world is printing again
On the pictures that opened as memorial offerings
The moonlight sits around for a long time
* Chuseok: Korean for “the great middle of autumn.” It is a major harvest festival.