默
muk the held silence
默
ipjosim.com a quiet practice of guarding the mouth.
①a closed mouth seen in profile
말은 한 번 입을 떠나면
다시는 돌아오지 않는다.
mareun han beon ibeul tteonamyeon dasineun doraoji anhneunda
a word, once it leaves the mouth, never returns.
a folded letter, sealed but unaddressed
a half-sentence the author chose
to leave —
tea, untouched. steam still climbing.
慎
shin the careful weighing
①
Once, my grandmother held a sentence in her mouth for the length of an entire afternoon. I watched her at the low table, peeling jujubes, turning the words on her tongue the way one turns a stone in the palm to feel its weight. By dusk she had set the words down again, unspoken, and lit the lamp instead. I never asked what they were. I think she meant me to learn, by her not saying, that some sentences are kinder for being held.
— a recollection, undated
a brush, lifted. a single ink drop suspended.
言葉を量る、
紙の重さを量るように。
kotoba o hakaru kami no omosa o hakaru you ni
to weigh a word as one weighs the weight of paper.
a bell with its clapper bound by a ribbon
to speak is to spend.
to withhold is to keep.
— marginal note, unsigned
含
ham the holding-in-the-mouth
chopsticks at rest, parallel, never crossed
혀끝에 머무는 것은
삼킨 것보다 무겁다.
hyeokkeute meomuneun geoseun samkin geotboda mugeopda
what stays on the tongue weighs more than what is swallowed.
a folded byeongpung, seen from above
②
There is a particular Korean grammar — the sentence-ender 더라 — that exists only to report what one has witnessed without asserting it. The speaker testifies but does not commit. It is the syntax of a person who has seen and decided not to swear by what they saw. I think of it whenever I need to step back from a sentence I am about to make harder than it should be.
— a translator's note
a pomegranate split. the seeds are old vowels.
忍
in the practiced patience
a lantern unlit, the wick still visible
言わぬが花。
iwanu ga hana
that which is not said is the flower.
a noren, only half-parted
silence is not the absence of speech.
silence is the choice of it.
a stone dropped. one and a half rings.
黙
moku the closing silence
a monk's staff leaning unused against a wall
③
In the small room above the bookshop where I once worked, there was a sign tacked above the kettle: three breaths before the answer. I disliked it for years, found it sanctimonious. I miss it now. Most of what I have regretted saying, I would have caught on the second breath. The third was always for the things I would have wanted to keep.
— annotation in a margin, c. 2019
an empty inkstone. the burgundy stain remains.
입을 지키는 것은
병을 막는 것이다.
ibeul jikineun geoseun byeongeul makneun geosida
to guard the mouth is to prevent illness.
a whispering reed, tapering to nothing
未發 mi-bal not yet uttered