[Afternoon Poem] Seosi (Preface)/Lee Seong-bok

I bought dinner at a small restaurant

A late and shabby evening comes

The street where a strange wind blows is slippery

My beloved, until you suddenly recognize me

in the alley across the street

I have no place to go

Until you suddenly recognize me

I have no place to go

Birdsong flashes and flows from all directions

The grass field bending behind my body as it darkens,

My voice calling you

Leaves dance between the tall poplar trees

■ Everyone probably has such a train station in their heart. Like Jochiwon, Andong, or Taebaek, a quiet yet somehow unfamiliar train station. Read this poem along with the "late and shabby evening" of such a place. Your heart will become infinitely dense and endlessly desolate. What more can be said about this poem? But why does this poem make us so helpless? Because it records defeat. The "you" in the "alley across the street" will never recognize me. So the speaker's lack of a place to go may last throughout this life. This can also be said as follows: ultimately, this poem stems from the impossibility that you will never recognize me, and there is nothing I can do about it. And despite this helplessness, "my voice calling you" is exactly the poem. ? Poet Chaesangwoo

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