FŪDO 058 · 1980 · Middle Jeju · poem

Crows on the Stone Wall

돌담 위 까마귀

Basic information

Identifier	FŪDO 058
Title	Crows on the Stone Wall돌담 위 까마귀
Date	1980

Short commentary

The mound of stone becomes the form of people who lost speech while waiting for those who did not return.

Artwork text · poem

Text by Byun Joung Hoon

On the stone wall
the crows are gathered.
The stone tomb before them, too,
if you look quietly,
seems like people crouching together.
Shoulder to shoulder,
heads bowed,
gathered into a single mass.
Far out at sea,
a small boat is afloat.
The birds can fly,
but the people turned to stone
cannot leave their place.
Did they wait so long
that people became stone?
Waiting for the one who left,
did those who remained lean on one another
and harden into a single tomb?
The boat is far away,
and the waiting remains on land.
The stone tomb is not dead stone,
but the form of people who,
waiting for the one who does not return,
lost their words.
Today, too, the stone
is in that place.