Poetry and Translation from Korean by Ihlwha Choi
HALF-A-BEAT BEHIND
I am a person
half-a-beat behind.
Some say I am lazy,
some even call me incapable,
but in almost everything I do,
I am half-a-beat behind.
I walk half-a-beat late,
arrive half-a-beat late,
and sometimes pay the price.
Yet, when I need to be fast,
I can be that too.
At my elementary school sports day,
I even won prizes
and was chosen for the relay team.
Perhaps it is because I am a country boy,
I sometimes think.
But then again,
I have country friends
who move two or three times faster than I do,
so perhaps that is not quite it.
If only I had been
half-a-beat ahead,
or even simply walked
with the same stride as everyone else,
everything would have been different.
But because I walked
half-a-beat behind,
I met poetry
walking a little way behind the others.
And with poetry,
which no one else seemed to notice,
I have walked slowly, step by step,
all the way to here.
Ihlwha Choi is a South Korean poet. He has published multiple poetry collections, such as Until the Time When Our Love will Flourish, The Color of Time, His Song and The Last Rehearsal.
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