Poet's words

Part 1

Diaspora on the Beach | Lent of That Year | The Road to Donghwasa Temple | A Pair of White-crowned Cranes | The Origin of Pain | Dizziness on Mount Baekdu | Mosquito Day | The Sunny Side of That Country | In the Name of the Wind | The Testimony of a White Butterfly | The Man Washing Feet | Leaving the Avatar | Winter's Response | My Brother's Memorial Day | Around the Time of Ipdong

Part 2

Late String Quartet | Like First Love | My Sister's Farewell | A Day in the Shadow | Late Autumn at Waon Beach | On a Big Journey | A Bird Living Alone | A Long Journey | A Secret Village | Thoughts on Snow | A Discovery in the Morning | A Crane | The King of Kings

Part 3

The Orchard of Perpetual Life | Using a Different Room | An Elegant Tree | Taming Chitchat 23 | Taming Chitchat 24 | Geulpina Geulpina | In the Gogunsan Archipelago | In the Gogunsan Archipelago 2 | Seeing Off a Friend | Sunset Family | Promise | The River of Myth | The Argentine Rainbow | A Single Wind | When I Was a Poet

prose
Island without heroes

commentary
The origin of deep and beautiful days?·?Jeong Geut-byeol

Even if everything I miss falls apart
A young hope held in the palm of your hand

All the places I miss have changed.
The body in its old form that has not been able to shed its shell
I just now noticed that everyone has left.
Learn why all bottles are pale.
Mumbling that plants have memories too
Someone who listens to my monologue in secret
I feel like you're around me for some time now.

―Excerpt from “Lent of That Year”

The deep nostalgia that permeated Ma Jong-gi's poetry stemmed from the longing that had taken root within him.
He expands his unique experience of living as a "border person", wandering between the borders of his home country and a foreign country, without belonging anywhere, into the universal life of humanity, exploring human life and truth, not just individual experiences.
The “pale green, heart-warming plans” (“The Road to a Fairy Tale”) that grew up “in the midst of chaos 70 years ago” are a “young hope” and a belated letter that thirteen-year-old Ma Jong-gi sends to himself 70 years later.
“Even though I promise to live diligently/I leave behind the anxious days of the past” (“The Sunny Side of That Country”), “all the places I miss have changed” and familiar faces have left my side.
The poet, observing the people and places he believed would last forever crumble one by one, listens to the sound of winter, which “responds, little by little, with sleet” (“Winter’s Response”) to the words of “the philosopher who says that all humans are displaced people.”
Ma Jong-gi's poetry, which uses family, friends, neighbors, and nature as its material, asks after people we can no longer meet, irretrievable memories, and time that cannot be reached.
The poet who exhorted, “Don’t judge people with your eyes/Look at people with your ears” (“Opinions on the Eyes”) has now reached an age where he knows that “rivers flow more slowly as they get older” (“Taming Chitchat 24”).
His confession that he feels like someone has been listening to his monologue for some time is likely filled with his unwavering belief in living the life given to him and memories that will remain unforgettable no matter how much time passes.
We learn about life once again from this beautiful poet.

He compresses experiences, mediates memories, transforms perceptions, and condenses emotions into concise aphorisms.
It is an expression of a poetic desire to redefine invisible love, the responsibility and duty of love, the source of loneliness and longing resulting from it, and the pain and meaning of life in one's own words.
He has always questioned and sought answers about life and the world, understood life and the world, and examined and interpreted its memories.
It may also be a poetic reflection and a product of will on why some memories are unforgettable and how to live on without forgetting others.
―Jeong Gyeot-byeol, commentary from “The Origin of Deep and Beautiful Days”

Singing in search of the truth of the world
The gentle warmth of a beautiful poet

Then when I was still a poet
I sang while drunk as requested.
I suddenly looked around and there was no one there.
Even anxious tears cannot flow
I couldn't take my eyes off of him.

［······］

Yeah, open your eyes.
The hidden waterway inside me
The dawn flows with a sound,
To avoid becoming a lost patient
I ask the dew between the blades of grass to accompany me.
So when I was a poet who had overcome long suffering.

―Excerpt from “When I Was a Poet”

The poet, watching a pair of cranes mating, recalls the “precious sight of monks’ dances, the whirling salpuri dances, and the immaculate crane dances” he used to enjoy in his youth, “without excitement, without drooling, without amusement, but with a calm, ecstatic beauty.”
And then, when I encounter a moment like this, when life bears a splendid dew, I ask myself, “Can I now truly believe that I have become a poet?” (“A Pair of Cranes”).
The cranes walking gracefully with their heads together convey the meaning of life in the grass on which they stand, and the poet willingly shares that moment with us.
He writes poetry with the desire to look into the abyss of invisible objects and listen once more to the inaudible sounds. He holds a long-held belief that poetry “must become a tool for healing wounds in a bleak world” (the poet’s note on the back cover of “Angel’s Lament”).
“Justice is sold for a few pennies anywhere/Everyone learned it while touching their sore throats” (“The Origin of Pain”). For him, writing poetry is like a reckless attempt to not lose the beauty of life.


The poet glimpses the solemn attitude of a mosquito sitting at his desk, saying, “All the world is neither peaceful nor fair / Learned with one death” (“Mosquito Day”), but he responds to the call of poetry with concern, “I might kill someone with one mistake / I might hurt someone with one slip of the tongue.”
“In his younger days, he wanted to be a good poet, so many times he drank and got drunk and fell to the ground,” but only after he “left the country and became lonely” did he come to the painful realization that “only pain heals pain” (“The Long Road”).
The poet, who “wandered his whole life in search of good poetry without even knowing what it meant to be shaken,” confesses that “when I was shaken, poetry would bloom all over my body” (from “Gogunsan Islands”).
This may be a question about the survival dimension of a doctor and a question about the origin of existence, the purpose of a poet as a writer.
Even in the midst of the pain of a world where he cannot settle down, the poet faces himself as “a poet who has overcome long suffering” with “one day he was middle-aged and another day he was old” (“The River of Myth”).
The works of a poet who has achieved such moral maturity convey an innately beautiful nature and a purity that does not fade with time, and they resonate deeply with readers.
He said that amidst the hardships of life he had to endure as an immigrant after leaving his homeland, he was only able to discover his own identity when he wrote poetry. He still excavates the sadness embedded in all living things.
In this way, it elevates the aesthetics of poetry to a higher level and asks what is important in our lives.

I couldn't show that kind of sadness to my mother or my younger sibling.
Instead, I wrote several poems, and often cried alone while writing them.
Poems like “Words of the Wind” and “The Invisible Country of Love” were written at that time.
―From the prose, “The Island Without Heroes”

Poet's words

This collection of poems is a collection of poems written and published over the five years since 『The Angel's Lament』.
So all the poems here were written after I turned eighty.
I still find it amazing that I can write poetry.
Thank you for reading my poetry.

October 2025
Ma Jong-gi