[Afternoon Poem] While Waiting for You / Hwang Ji-woo

At the place where you promised to come

I go ahead and wait for you

Every approaching footstep

Thumps in my chest

Even the rustling leaves come to me

Those who have waited know

Is there anything more heart-wrenching than waiting in this world?

At the place where you promised to come, where I am already waiting

Everyone who opens the door and enters

Was you

Was you, will be you

Then the door closes again

My beloved

Waiting for you who do not come

At last, I go to you

From a very far place, I go to you

After a very long time, you are now coming

From a very far place, you are still slowly coming

While waiting for you, I am also going

Through the door others open and enter

Following every footstep thumping in my chest

While waiting for you, I am going to you.

Note: Is there love without waiting? As long as there is hope, as long as despair that gave birth to hope exists. My steep life makes me wait for something. Democracy, freedom, peace, warm breath of love. Life that only waits before these old words is anxious. Waiting rusts life. The sound of the tofu seller’s cart is gone these days. I hear someone shouting through a handheld mic from morning, carrying vegetables on a Titan truck. Somewhere, it seems a child was born again in a hospital. The dairy cow will raise that child with her own teat. You too will let this rust-like waiting dye your life.

■ There was a time when just waiting for the "you who does not come" was a crime. There was a time when just the determination of "waiting for you who does not come" and "finally" "going to you" meant imprisonment. There was a time when just the heart to believe in "you who are coming slowly from a very far place" meant being wanted and having to run away. 'Democracy' 'freedom' 'peace' 'warm breath of love'. These words may now be old, but before them, our lives are still 'anxious'. The May sunlight flickers dazzlingly through the opening and closing door. But "my beloved," "you who are coming after a very long time," you who are still now, like 'rust,' piercing, "heart-wrenching" you, all of us are "you" and "I," May, an eternal May that will never arrive, and thus ultimately the hope, life, and existence that is "you," May Gwangju. ? Poet Chaesangwoo