The embrace of the Antarctic emperor penguins
Lifts the cold from tens below zero to tens above.
Poet YOO Ja Hyo was born in Busan, South Korea, in 1947, and graduated from Seoul National University. Moving gracefully between literature and journalism, he played a distinguished role in Korean media and cultural life, serving as Director of the European Bureau of KBS, Director of SBS, President of the Korea Broadcast Journalists Club, and President of the Korean Poets’ Association. A prolific and visionary poet, he has published twenty volumes of poetry, among them the recent collection AI and Poetry, a work that reflects his continuing dialogue with the changing spirit of the age. His poetic voice has also reached readers in France through the selected collection Communication Intergallactique and the sijo anthology Céladon de Goryeo, both of which reveal the lyrical depth and philosophical resonance of Korean literature to an international audience. In recognition of his outstanding literary achievement, he has received many of Korea’s most prestigious honors, including the Manhae Literary Award Grand Prize, the Jeong Ji-yong Literary Award, and the Korean Literature Award.
Embrace
Antarctica’s emperor penguins survive by embracing one another
through blizzards raging in temperatures dozens of degrees below zero.
They encircle one another, layer upon layer.
Hundreds, thousands together—clasped into a single living mass.
Slowly, ceaselessly, they rotate, so that each one may enter, in turn,
the heart of the embrace.
They say that at the center it grows warm with living heat.
The embrace of the Antarctic emperor penguins
lifts the cold from tens below zero to tens above.
***
포옹
남극 황제펭귄이 영하 수십 도의 폭풍설을 견디는 것은 포옹의 힘이다
그들은 겹겹이 에워싼다
수백 수천의 무리가 하나의 덩어리로 끌어안고 뭉친다
천천히 끊임없이 회전하며 골고루 포옹의 중심에 들어가도록 한다
그 중심은 열기로 더울 정도라고 한다
남극 황제펭귄의 포옹은
영하 수십 도를 영상 수십 도로 끌어올린다
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