Hwang Yuwon
Translated from the Korean by Jake Levine and Soohyun Yang
The Stars’ Whispers
The sound of breath freezing mid-air the moment it is exhaled
is what the Yakut people of Siberia call
the stars’ whispers.
The Yakut people must’ve been the first
to hear the stars’ whispers.
I mean who if not them, and who but them,
are able to name a sound
the stars’ whispers?
If it hadn’t been so cold,
so cold that the birds in the sky froze mid-flight and fell to the earth
thud
into chunks of ice
the stars wouldn’t have whispered.
The stars’ whispers are harsh so they’re beautiful and
because they’re beautiful, the harsh lo-fi sound
is a beauty that’s not very interested
in reproducing the audible frequencies close to the original sound, so
no matter where you are, even if you are not in Siberia,
you can listen to the stars’ whispers
and hear the sky’s freezing breath.
Outside on a cold day, even through earphones shared with someone,
we listen to the sound of stars that freeze
and break like candies, scatter into powder, and
when it’s so clear that it feels like my head might explode any second,
when it’s so clear that it feels like my head already exploded,
on that kind of clear and cold night, from everywhere,
I can hear the stars whispering.
What an indifferent beauty.