Borderlands (by Suji Kwock Kim)

Griffin Prize for Excellence In Poetry, The (2001 - 0)

Original Text

Suji Kwock Kim, Notes from the Divided Country (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2003). This poem is reproduced on the Griffin Prize Web Site (from a volume on the 2004 International Shortlist).

1Crush my eyes, bitter grapes:

2wring out the wine of seeing.

3We tried to escape across the frozen Yalu, to Ch’ientao or Harbin.

4I saw the Japanese soldiers shoot:

5I saw men and women from our village blown to hieroglyphs of viscera,

6engraving nothing.

7River of never.

8River the opposite of Lethe,

9dividing those who lived from those who were killed:

10why did I survive?

11I wondered at each body with its separate skin, its separate suffering.

12My childhood friend lay on the boot-blackened ice:

13I touched his face with disbelief,

14I tried to hold his hand but he snatched it away, as if he were ashamed of dying,

15eye grown large with everything it saw, everyone who disappeared:

16pupil of suffering.

17Lonely O, blank of an eye

18rolled back into its socket,

19I was afraid to see you:

20last thoughts, last dreams crawling through his skull like worms.

RPO poem Editors

Ian Lancashire

RPO Edition

2011