Translating poems on Seoul Metro's platform screen doors
Two good things in life: trains and poems
Lately I have been thinking whether to continue this blog. After four years writing on here, I feel I have seen all the highs and all the lows on what it is to run a quirky esoteric blog on the histories of mass urban transit. All major metrics are smaller or growing slower within the past year, but the arduous work of researching, writing, and editing only seems to get bigger. There is also the problem of my own pickiness in what I choose to write; if I loosened up more and wrote shorter and quicker and became more discursive to the topic of the day, then perhaps this entirely self-imposed burden will be lessened. But that, I am afraid, goes against the foundational promise I made with myself when I started this blog: I want to read the histories I find interesting in the truest form I feel it deserves.
I think far more about poems than about trains these days, perhaps because poems are more important than trains. Both poems and trains have the potential within to remake the world, I believe that truly. But I am far greedier than I let on, so I want both. More of both, all the time. And I realized in my purview there is a place and form that helps satisfy both.
Since the widespread installation of platform screen doors on all Seoul Metro stations in 2009, which I detailed in length here, Seoul Metro stations have this wonderful amenity of published poems on its glass doors so platform passengers can read as they wait for their train. The City of Seoul has run this program since 2008 and only applies to stations in city limits; according to this article from 2020, they have more than 2,000 poems displayed across 4,600 individual platform screen door panels across 288 stations in Seoul. Every year, they host a poem competition for non-professional poets to submit works which then are selected to be displayed.
I scoured the Korean internet to pick a few of my favorite poems I have seen and translated it to the best of my abilities. (I wished I had the presence of mind in 2024 to take photos of some impressive poems I saw live while waiting for the subway train in Seoul.) Most poems are from the amateur competition I mention above, which I find all the more impressive. As someone who has been reading a lot more poems, and have been privately writing poems, I want to use this transit hook to bait you into reading more poems in your life. And if enough people like this post and want more, I will consider follow-ups of translating Seoul Metro platform screen door poems.
This month, I was laid off from my employer. This means I want to devote more time and energy to write as much as possible, including for this blog. I have no intention of so pausing or shutting the blog down, at least not until I am totally out of ideas. I have some new histories I am exploring, and I hope I make haste on those. But I am also writing new forms in fiction and poems in my own free time. I ask for your patience in any unexpected delays in the future. Thank you and enjoy.
Wrinkles
by Han Sang-rim (2021 Citizen Selection)
Ridges have formed on grandmother’s blotchy back of the hand
“Grandma, why is your hand like this?”
Rubbing the back of her hand
The great-grandson’s two eyes open wide awake
Baby, this here is love
Love is not something anyone can earn
When you caress many times over
When you want to give so much
Then it grows little by little, like marks on a ruler
Between the grandmother and the great-grandson
Love is growing
Checking in
by Han Sang-rim (2019 Citizen Selection)
When I bowed to pick up a gingko seed
I politely asked the gingko tree how it is doing
Does the thunder roar not scare you
As you fanned yourself cool in midst of scorching heat
And tried to raise solid a seed the size of a bean
How much tears did you swallow
As you decorate your leaves yellow
And as you rush to prepare their departures
How was the heart of a mother readying its farewell
As you wish well on your departing children
And cleanly shake down your empty branches
What last words did you share as the final goodbye
Words, Its Power
by Choi Sung-ja
More than the rain
After a three month drought
The utterance
That I
Missed you more
The good things, the sad things
All forgotten
Only the things I couldn’t do for you
The thought “I should do better for you”
How it comes out
Like coursing spring water
The Psychic
by Yoo Ji-young (2024 Citizen Selection)
What kind of psychic power would you like?
I want to read people’s hearts.
Why?
Do you want to read the teacher’s exam questions?
Do you want to read the heart of a lover?
No,
I want to know where people
Are going to get off on the subway!
I ride standing again today…
Wildflower
by Kang Myung-sook
There are no trivial roles under the equitable sky
No matter how small it is
Each in its own quiet ways are actors chosen by God
Even when placed on the edge and stomped violently
And then collapsing to its knees facing heavy winds
To be revived stubbornly by the morning dew
This tough, chewy life
To endure somehow despite the pain
Who cries in my place during sorrow
You who blossoms as you sway here and there
As It Turns Out
by Park Deung (2023 Citizen Selection)
The spring I turned six
I climbed Mt. Inwang with my father and mother
Father would stroke my head over and over, saying
You’re walking great
Good job
Proud of you
He spared nothing in his compliments
The evergreen leaves too did not hold back their applause
From these compliments, I climbed a mountain
As it turns out I climbed over the years from this power
What The Word Equality Means
by Kim Jin-sook (Korean Writers Association)
Like the thought hanging
Upside down on a steel beam
Like not taking sides
At the playground known as the world
Like a rainbow sock
Hanging neatly on a clothesline
Like a philosophy sitting on a seesaw
This word equality
Like lifting the other up with our two feet
As we face each other
Like me letting go little by little
As I try to inch closer and closer
Screen Door
by Han Sang-rim
There is a double door between people too
After the train leaves
On the door turned into a black screen
Van Gogh’s one ear hovers around
And an actress’s sad teardrops zips to and fro
And some bruised ego of a jobless patriarch
Keeps searching for something on the monitor
As the train which left the previous station
Approaches gently here
People line up in front of the wall
Which waits anxiously to turn into a door again
They stare at their own portraits
And tirelessly work to match their puzzle
Thank you for these. I moved to Seoul in 2008 and left in 2017. I never once stopped to read through because it would take me too long.