☀ Today's Poem: "Fly, Hospital!" Kim Hyesoon

When I close my eyes and float up
I feel as if I’m drifting inside someone who’s under anesthesia

Moon is shining like the lens of the patient’s eyeball
and I’m sitting on the white of his eye
examining his sadness

We’re experiencing turbulence, please fasten your seatbelts
Is everyone listening or sleeping?

In yesterday’s news somebody opened the window and cut the rope
of a window cleaner hanging from a high-rise building
His wife wailed all night long

As on a plane there are first, second, third-class zones in hospitals and funeral parlors

Patients endure, strapped to the bed, in one, two, or six-bed zones

Everything in front of me is like the seawater
surrounding the weeping capsized boat on the TV screen

But daddies sick in bed
call out, Mommy, mommy!
What can their mothers in graves possibly do for them?
Their mothers are also looking for their mommies

Two eyes scared or scary looking
are stuck to the frozen window like double lightbulbs
Hospital flies far away at night
circling the Earth like a Ferris wheel

The inside is life and the outside is death
Life is a sealed bag

I think that the guardrail bed
is flying away

Down below fishing boats sail out from the harbor
and the big wildfire begins to spread

Rats multiply endlessly
like the headwaters of a river

Lapdogs yelp from the delivery van
flying across my dark eyes

As on a plane, there are first-class, second-class, third-class coffins at the mortuary
Hospital rows, squeaking across the sky-pond at night
pretending it can't hear me at all
even when I tell it to be quiet

Mommy, please help me, help me, Mommy!
Dear Daddy, it's your nightmare

Birds migrating over the Himalayas
cover their ears