Im Sol Nae - Poem
Moderator 
Ms. IM SOL NAE (SOUTH KOREA)
Poet Ms. Im Sol Nae received the Newcomer Award from the monthly literary magazine Jayu Munhak in 1999. Her poetry collections include The QR Code of a Leaf, Amazon, That Transit Station, The Cry of an Awakened Amazon, Hong Nyeo, and many others. She has also received numerous literary honors, including the Yeongnang Poetry Award, the Korean Literary Critics Association Award, the Korean Lyric Poetry Award, selection as a Sejong Excellent Book, the Poet’s Poet Award, and the Buddhist Literary Writers’ Award.
She is the 6th President of the Korean Association of World Literature.
METAMORPHOSIS
For years in the dark earth,
he wandered as a grub,
I hold his dream to the sunlight,
and because it is hollow, it brims with light.
Facing the pitch-black wall of soil,
murmuring chants through countless summers of meditation and winters of meditation,
in a hermitage sunk deep beneath the ground,
the days he offered to his dream,
though wrapped in emptiness like a shroud of hemp,
were they sweet?
That single room of dazzling, colorless light.
A soft breath- whoosh- as if it could fly, weightless and radiant,
this single moment-
might take me a whole lifetime to reach.
*Woo-hwa - the transformation of a chrysalis into a winged being.
