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Poem: Going Going Gone

This poem in translation is surreal in its depiction of grief. It has a recurring image of a bird that’s a figure for death and grief after the loss of the poet’s father. Don Mee Choi’s translation of the poem captures the eternal void of grief. Repetition mimics grief’s insistence: “Bird cuts me out” in the first and third stanzas, “I exit” throughout and “I take a step toward where I don’t exist,” which is repeated twice near the end of the poem. The poem’s form shows how grief changes within stasis. The second and fourth stanzas echo but swerve, until we get the callback and negation in the final stanza: “Bird doesn’t cut me out.” The final line, “Behind the wall I’m on standby forever,” channels the energy of a lyric poem, a sense of running in place. Selected by Victoria Chang

Credit…Illustration by R. O. Blechman

Going Going Gone

By Kim Hyesoon, translated by Don Mee Choi from the Korean

Bird cuts me out
like the way sunlight cuts out shadows

Hole enters
the spot where I was cut out
I exit

Bird cuts me out
like the way time cuts me

Gaping mouth enters
the cutout

I exit through the open mouth
then return as a cut-out child

I exit again

I take a step toward where I don’t exist

I take a step toward where I don’t exist

Bird doesn’t cut me out
Behind the wall I’m on standby forever


Victoria Chang has written five books of poems, most recently “Obit” (Copper Canyon Press, 2020), which was named a New York Times Notable Book and a Time Must-Read. Her book of nonfiction, “Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence and Grief,” was published by Milkweed Editions in 2021. She lives in Los Angeles and teaches in Antioch University’s M.F.A. program. Kim Hyesoon is a South Korean poet whose work has won the Midang and Kim Su-Yong awards. Her collections include “Autobiography of Death” (New Directions, 2018) and the forthcoming “Phantom Pain Wings” (2023), from which this poem is taken. Don Mee Choi is a poet and translator whose work includes “DMZ Colony” (Wave Books, 2020).

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