Chapter 59 "Although you stand still"

〔North Korea〕Zheng Wenxiang① Although you stand silently, the white clouds fly above your head, and the dewdrops in the starry sky fall on your uniform. Although the place where you stand is narrow, flowers bloom at your feet in spring, and birds circle around your shoulders in autumn. Except for the pine trees, the cliff and the spring water under the cliff, you are standing alone, but you hear whispers from time to time, and your eyes meet with other people's eyes from time to time. You are close to you. To the Green Field" (1946), "Declaration of Victory" (1951), "Never Forgotten" (1960), "Time" (1961) and "Suddenly Meet Him Anywhere——Marshal Kim Il Sung" (1960) three).This poem is translated from an English typescript provided by Comrade Cui Ronghua, head of the North Korean writers' delegation to China in 1963. ——Translator Butterflies fly, mothers weave quietly, and someone hums underground to hasten an explosion.

When you are drenched in the rain, when you are sweating, when you stand on the frozen ground, the crops are whispering in the fields, the ships return from the sea, and the pilots fly to the sky. The turbines are turning, the wheels are turning, snowflakes are flying outside the door, and iron is melting in the furnace. You guard the boundless fields where sharecroppers who yesterday fought for an inch of land now till their land with tractors. You guard houses and warehouses full of grain, although the residents there were originally extremely poor and once knelt down and begged for a handful of rice.

You defend the seas, mountains and rivers that were defended with endless blood and tears. You defended the factories, the towers, and the gleaming windows that had been rebuilt from the ruins. You drink sweet milk, you wear soft silk shirts, but you never forget the past. At that time, you wandered around to gather weeds that were barely swallowable, and you were worried about a piece of cloth to keep out the cold. You guard that intense, insatiable sweat and labor, even when carts have been turned into tractors, turf stones into silk, and clouds into irrigation water. You stand at all times in the face of thousands of enemies who plot against us.

Although you stand silently, holding the gun in your hand, like the rotating earth, you are roving around the land. You don't distinguish between winter and summer, you don't distinguish between day and night, you defend the only motherland. So you stand silently. Therefore you have blood. Therefore you have eyes and ears. Therefore you are a Sentinel! You held tightly the gun that was dyed red by every action, for the motherland, for the leader who entrusted the motherland to you, you buried the thunder storm in your heart. (The above three translated poems were published in the January and February 1964 issues of World Literature.)