The Ark

Maori warriors flattened the lands won through bloodshed

and named it the South Island.

When the giant bustard flapped its wings,

the roots of the grassland trembled even in the wind.

On New Zealand’s earthquake island, isolated at 00:02,

three white-faced cows.

This tiny island of earth, where everything collapsed leaving only just enough,

is it God’s planned ark?

Counting toward infinity, then snap, short by the number 3.

Into that very plan, God drags the three cows.

The crumbling and cracking vast land is no longer a pasture for the cattle.

Like those times, excluded from the game of hopscotch at dusk,

the abandoned herd of cows.

The cows, puzzled by the suddenly narrowed field, comfort one another.

The cows can no longer go up

nor go down; nibbling on grass, they are peaceful for now.

The cows do not know God,

yet calmly, they rub their flanks together and graze.

That silent endurance of the cows.

Every crack in the world is a tear shed by God.

Seventeen-Year-Old Miss Marco Polo Sheep

By Yeon Myung-ji

Miss Marco Polo Sheep of the Pamir Mountains loved almond blossoms

and was an aspiring singer

who sang along to K-POP.

An aspirant,

what a beautiful occupation.

Riding the rhythm on the breath of the wind,

an aspirant walking the grassland.

She loves the wild goat

that endured the winter, tightly chewing on festuca grass.

The beasts of winter

must be winter aspirants.

The ghost of the snow mountains, the snow leopard,

must be a snow aspirant.

When you lie face down on the grassland, the grass sways,

and when you flip over the back of a stone, fish swim—

the aspirants of nature.

Only when a river flows from the belly

does the voice break through, says Miss Marco Polo Sheep.

Even if bitten on the nape and blood flows,

the song of the idol goat cannot be given up.

The pop song, which claimed that when the snow melts,

the leopard would melt too,

was plagiarism anyway.

The moonlight darkens,

and the snow leopard of Pamir, a high and desolate land,

drags its long tail across the ridge—

the ghost of the alpine.

The aspirant of a fairy tale,

caught off guard by the seventeen-year-old Miss Marco Polo Sheep.

Profile
Poet Yeon Myung-ji began her literary career in 2013 with the poetry collection 『Gashibi』, published in the Minerva Poetry Series.

Her published works include the poetry collections 『Sitting Like an Apple』 and 『Where would the House of the Sorry’ be? 』 the e-poetry collection 『Seventeen Marco Polos,』 and the travel essay 『Step by Step, Walking the Camino.』She has received the Tolstoy Literary Award, the Homi Literary Award, the Cheongsong Gaekju Literary Award, and the Aviation Literary Award. In 2025, she was awarded the Bronze Prize in Poetry at the Literature Asia Awards, Grand Prize Winner,9th Kim Myung-bae Literary Award.

Her poems have been translated and published in local languages in India, Pakistan, Kosovo, Italy, Egypt, the United States, and Belgium, Greece, UK, and Germany.