Student-MadeNov 5, 2020

updated Nov 20, 2023

Un peu moins imparfaite, un peu plus piégée

A new poem by Jiho Shin ’21

(Jiho Shin ’21)

[English translation]

I was wondering
if I was trapped
I was beginning
to believe in the trap
when I saw the keys

They didn’t cry
of pain
or for rescue.
I knew it.

I knew there was
Calm
in silence.
But was it truly so?

I sealed
my lips
and I gazed
at the nonexistent horizons.
I was a good listener.

Everyone
on the other side of the bars
approved
of my pretended wisdom.

An artist without voice
who resists
against a pitiful world
on the brink of collapse,
they would murmur in astonishment
if I twitched an eye.

There was a problem.
No one would know me.
The calm?
Never found it.

They smiled at me.
I froze.
I needed to abandon
my efforts to

craft a soul so precious
that no one could know me,
that no one could search for me.

I wish
my little self had seen
the void
within her relentless attempts
to fill it,

that what she was chasing after
was vanity.

Why can’t I
remember my own dreams?
And you,
Time,

why can’t you see
that I’m simply afraid
of losing you?

Because all I can hear
is a helpless child
devoured by a furious ocean

sobbing and sobbing
for her childhood lost
in the merciless wave.