Zero Degrees’ Love

  Written by Kim Kooseul

Translated from the Korean by Darcy Paquet

 Narrated by Bill Wolak

South Korea

 

Zero Degrees is itself its own world

 

Walking through the path without a shadow

We sometimes stare into the air

 

Overhead soundless feathers

Toward the vanishing point with no way out

Heart gazing down at its feet

Unexpectedly seems to be weeping

 

Unlikely ever to find

Any possibility of the world nonexistent

How to reach the world

Where any flowers do not fade

 

Anything we miss

Is beyond the world

 

The sound of a ship horn foretelling its departure

Over the dark waves

Beckons love not existing in the world

Raising waves above the horizon fading away

 

Kim Kooseul  is a South Korean poet, scholar and translator.  Here latest book translated into English is Lost Alleys, Mundus Artium Press, 2020. She has earned numerous major prizes and honors. A specialist in English and other literary traditions, she is a Professor Emeritus at Hyupsung University. The publisher of Lyric Poetry and Poetics, she is the organizer of the Changwon KC International Literary Prize and the KS World Poetry Festival. Her work has been translated into many languages.

Darcy Paquet is a film critic and translator who has been living in South Korea since 1997. He has translated the subtitles for over 150 Korean films including Parasite (2019). The author of New Korean Cinema: Breaking the Waves (Columbia University Press), he teaches at the Busan Asia Film School and has also taught a media translation workshop at the Literature Translation Institute of Korea.