Why Must Love Die Here?

📖Repetition for Love_Hwang In-chan’s Poetry Collection

After deciding to get closer to love, whenever I visit the library, I made sure to borrow at least one book with “love” in its title. Love is difficult for everyone. Perhaps the greatest dilemma on earth. I can’t jump to conclusions, but a poet’s love feels especially dark and heavy. As the poet says, something like love, you can just give it to anyone.

📝 Thoughts and Sentences I Loved

pg.20

I am in the school of the past, sitting still

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I don’t know if the person who just greeted me and left was a high school friend or an old lover

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Things like that happen often

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Like calling my teacher “Mom” (that happened in middle school), or waking up to a ceiling I’ve never seen before (not my story)

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Many thoughts often get jumbled together

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Lately, I’ve believed things I saw in dreams were real, and I’ve even thought I truly loved someone I wanted to kill

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I have many thoughts, many delusions, and a deep history, it seems

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…This person is a stranger, sitting still. If I saw a familiar face, I’d feel happy, wouldn’t I?

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I often think

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They said the world would become a movie someday (Jeong Seong-il),

why isn’t it yet?

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Has it already happened, perhaps?

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If so,

if the world is a movie,

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then perhaps these delusions too…

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…

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Let’s stop there

I am in the school of the past, sitting still

Without surprise or joy

pg.63

However,

regretting misunderstandings

resenting delusions

what is left after drinking tea?

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Something remains

The absence of anything

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I see

An empty teacup

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Anyway, for now,

it’s raining

pg.70

On days when sadness came, I wrote in my diary

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“Nothing happened

It was all fiction”

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As if that were some kind of confession

As if believing that if you keep confessing, you can become truthful…

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Here, he lived with me for a long time

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He watched all the flowers blooming in the flowerbed die

and cried all summer long

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pg.92

I was sitting alone in a restaurant, eating

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“Isn’t that tree splendid?”

“What tree?”

“I’ll tell you again later”

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Two dark-faced boys were talking. From my seat, no matter where I turned my head, there were only identical trees. Even after finishing my meal and going outside the restaurant, I couldn’t understand what they were talking about

pg.129

From a small white cup

steam rises

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What I remember is

the time I decided to stop being human

the cool air and the bitterness of matcha

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When I opened my eyes, lying beside me was

the face of dead love

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Yet, I kissed him, ate breakfast with him,

and sent him off

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Here, where he left saying there was no time, only time remains

On the small white water, tea leaves stand upright

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Someone said good things happen when tea leaves stand upright…

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It shatters

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pg.148

I wish there were no love in this poem

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I wish there were no song-like sounds coming from anywhere

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I wish this writing, which only drags on, were a poem

If it’s not a poem, that would be truly great

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I wish this poem had no images, no concepts, only love remaining

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I wish it weren’t love

I truly wish that

pg.150

<“When I say I love you, everyone says they’re sorry”>

The corpse of love that had fallen in the park

I pushed it with a branch, but it was too light

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Why must love die here?

I can’t bury it in the ground; dogs or cats would dig it up

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I wish it would just fly away,

but such a thing doesn’t happen

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In my dream that day,

the dead love I had left behind

came to my doorstep

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The dead love

lingered in front of the house, then left

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“I love you,” when I hear words like that, it feels like they’re shifting responsibility to me

“Love,” words like that are just irresponsible

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In poems like this, the corpse

is supposed to disappear without a trace

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However, if I go back to the park the next day,

the corpse of love is moving, with both eyes open

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pg.159

However, this poem also simultaneously evokes an inexplicable sense of helplessness. The ‘I’ knows every detail of the repeating scenes, yet cannot write a new story for what happens next. When the promised summer scenery and daily life have all passed, “long credits” roll up as if entering the end of a movie. And the poem soon returns “past the black screen” to “the first scene again.” In the repeatedly replayed screen, we step onto the same stage with expressions unaware of the events and heart-wrenching things that are about to unfold.

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pg.173

Something like love, you can just give it to anyone.

This was a thought I often had while compiling this poetry collection.

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