Land of the Morning Calm
by Diana Keren Lee
Three and a half decades after the war,
we searched for skyscrapers, taxis, palaces.
Saw a man pissing at the end of a road at dusk,
blue accruing to peach then dissolving to black.
Our parents our tour guides,
I wondered about their lives, and mine:
had I been born there, had I never been born
with the urge to speak, of what they carried,
what I translated from their faces.
The car approaching the mountain,
the first I had ever seen鈥�
later I came to know 鈥渕ountain after mountain,鈥�
the Korean proverb san neomeo san.
Haitians say D猫y猫 m貌n, gen m貌n.
鈥淏eyond mountains, there are mountains.鈥�
This poem reflects on language as landscape, the loss of language, and the limits and possibilities of language and translation. As a child, seeing my parents鈥� homeland鈥攁 landscape different yet familiar鈥攚as transformative. The title phrase 鈥淟and of the Morning Calm,鈥� an English translation of Joseon, is used to refer to Korea more often in English than in Korean. While the name suggests peace, Korea and Haiti have experienced significant political upheaval. The Korean War never officially ended, leaving Korea divided, and immigrants in the United States face deportation.
Time and space helped the poem find its form in tercets. Earlier drafts expanded on the phrases 鈥渕ountain after mountain鈥� and 鈥渂eyond mountains, there are mountains,鈥� but the poem now ends on these images/phrases. The last four lines can also be viewed as a quatrain (reminiscent of a villanelle, which has five tercets and a quatrain). Mountains are a symbol of expansiveness as well as obstacle. Language can be an obstacle, but it helps articulate the world around us.
Diana Keren Lee is the winner of a Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship. A National Poetry Series finalist, her work has appeared in Boston聽 Review, The Common, Denver Quarterly, The New Republic, Pleiades, and聽 elsewhere. Born and raised in Austin, she lives in Colorado.