elegy for my harabeoji

Esther Ra

or Budgie, as we called him sometimes in English,
Harabeoji being as long and impersonal as a bar
of blanched sand, a word for any grandfather
on our sea-licked, split-lipped peninsula. Budgie
a rolled-up lozenge of love, our affectionate trust
in his presence. Budgie the depth, specific warmth
of the gentle, somber-eyed man of towering height
who picked us up on his bike from school. What did it mean
to grow into a man when our land was still screaming
from hunger? When war grew so shrill that his hearing
walked out, and he sat shutter-breathed in the dark?
For Budgie, the language of love was stark: simple,
like his large worker’s hands. When he first met his wife
by his parents’ accord, he said only, Yes, she’s all right.
By his standards, a positive rhapsody. Budgie,
did I ever tell you how much I loved you? How central
you were, full of certitude? How your silence, warm
and flowing as gray felt, cloaked our childhood in safeness
of sleep? Terror of my father’s childhood–and, after he turned
from war to his God, dear comfort of our earliest years–
you were always so sturdy, so stately. Such a giant,
elephantine and pure. Such tenderness, patience,
as we patted your baldness, peeked and pestered
and laughed. Thank God that the ending hasn’t cloaked
the beginning. Thank God that your pain was still short.
Budgie, it is not the pandemic I think of when I think
of your life, your great body falling swiftly, like a tree.
It is your hope of heaven, deep as the sea. The familiar
smell of your papers. Your flat, snugly fitting gray cap.
And the broad, flat expanse of your unflinching back,
which I hugged every time we rode home.

Esther Ra is a bilingual writer and illustrator from Seoul, South Korea. She is the author of A Glossary of Light and Shadow (forthcoming from Diode Editions, selected for its Full-Length Book Award), book of untranslatable things (Grayson Books, 2018, selected for its Chapbook Award) and the founding editor of The Underwater Railroad, a literary reunification project. Her work has also been published in Boulevard, Rattle, Twyckenham Notes, The Rumpus, PBQ, and Korea Times, among others. She has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Pushcart Prize, 49th Parallel Award for Poetry, Women Writing War Poetry Award, and Sweet Lit Poetry Award. (estherra.com)