for Choi Sung Hee

i remember jeju-do: that living eye,
a candy-coloured sky that was remote-
controlled by halla-san, or lord muck,
a lady mountain gathering her skirts
around her as a cloud sucks up rain. 

i remember 제주 4·3 사건, although we
were not there, bullets like a maze,
weeping in secluded lanes, wounds as
big as tangerines & the green moulds 
all over the dead (the reds, the red

i remember gangjeong peace zone, cute
as a postcard, & its anti-nuke murals
(white wall with that painted-on tree 
whose outline mirrored that of a real
tree (its leaves greener than my hopes

i remember kang dong kyun, the mayor,
was arrested for protesting too much - 
and for eating too little in his cell,
his hunger strike embarrassing some,
while electrifying the people's media 

i remember "Touch not one flower, not 
one stone!", a great mantra for daily
living, just like mayor kang's letters,
each beginning with the line: dear 
mr. noam chomsky! dear mr. chomsky!

i remember seogwipo, quiet six pm city 
on the island's south side, the flowers
in boxes lining the steep path down to
the marina, & the harbour, & the wooden
restaurant where the mosquitoes ate us

i remember u-do, tiny postage stamp of
an island, where the haenyo plied their 
trade, sleek as seals in black diving
suits, surfacing with buckets full of 
sea anemones & sea's salt-water tears

but i forgot you, funny dol hareubang, 
like manwha characters playing dead,
frozen into stone on the mountainside. 
there'll be no memorial service for you
who can't remember, let alone regret.

Note: Jeju-do is an island off the south coast of Korea (Hangul: 제주도), famous for its resorts but also for the so-called Jeju uprising of 1948–49. Gangjeong is a small village on the south coast of Jeju-do which is home to an anti-nuclear Peace Zone. The village mayor, Kang Dong Kyun, regularly protests against military activities on the island. I wrote this poem after visiting Jeju-do, and the Gangjeong Peace Zone, in 2009. It was first published online in Peril in 2012.