Poems of Dr. Lim Hayoung (South Korea)

Poet Dr. Lim Hayoung was born in Janghang, Chungcheongnam-do, and holds a Ph.D. in engineering, embodying a unique career that bridges both academia and literature. He previously served as a professor at Woosong College and is currently active as the head of Munye Village and the vice president of Culture & People, contributing to the advancement of literature and culture.
He has achieved remarkable recognition in the field of poetry, receiving numerous prestigious awards, including the New Writer’s Award in the poetry category from the Daejeon Writers’ Association, the Contemporary Siseon Sidam Literary Grand Prize, the 2nd Poet and Culture Award, the 6th Nammyeong Poetry & Painting Exhibition Personality Award, the Sinjeong Literary Award, the UN NGO Literary Award, the Yun Dong-ju Star Literary Award, the Hall of Poetry Literary Work Award, the Kkeullim Literary Award, and the Korea Education Contribution Grand Prize, among many others. These honors demonstrate that his work has been highly regarded for both its literary excellence and social value.
In addition, he has consistently engaged in creative writing, publishing poetry collections such as The One I Long for Within Me, Stars Held in My Heart, and Winter Story, as well as a Sijo collection titled Spring Story. His works are characterized by their delicate portrayal of inner human emotions, longing, and reflections on life, establishing a broad literary world that harmonizes modern poetry with traditional Sijo.
 

A Name Borrowed from Winter
 Dr. Lim Hayoung

All night long, the spring rain leans
against the windowpane in a hushed voice,
erasing the names of flowers only to write them again.
 
At early dawn,
at the end of a rain-soaked alley,
the wind, still unable to abandon
winter’s sentence, lets out a long, cool breath.
 
Those just in bloom
—before they can even ask why they have blossomed—
tremble, scatter,
and release their colors into the air,
becoming for a fleeting moment
a sentence of light,
then fading away.
 
Spring, as always,
arrives with doubt before arrival itself,
gently pressing the shoulders of the fragile,
measuring the weight of being alive.
 
The instant a single petal
turns over in the cold wind,
I come to understand:
the seasons are an ancient sentence,
completed by pushing one another away.
 
And so, this trembling now, too,
may be nothing more than a slender stroke of ink—
spring, borrowing winter for a moment
to inscribe its name more deeply.
 

 
 
 
Toward the Red
Dr. Lim Hayoung

 
Dawn
came first to the wall
and hung there a single red lip.
 
Though no one called it all night,
the flower curled into itself
and gazed for a long while into the heart of darkness.
 
Whenever a drop of dew
trembles at the tip of a petal,
the names of those who have passed
seem still to be wet.
 
Standing before it,
I push toward the morning
the words I have never once been able to give.
 
The morning glory,
aware of its fading from the very instant it blooms,
still raises its slender neck to the sky.
 
To be red
is not to be wounded,
but to have somewhere you long, at last, to reach.
 
While sunlight crosses over the wall,
a small flower
calls forth the time called today
with its whole body.
 
 
 

 
Hands That Became Flowers
Dr. Lim Hayoung
 
In a corner of the yard,
moss roses bloomed
resembling my mother’s hands.
 
Pink ushered in the evening,
yellow wiped the sunlight clean,
and white folded away a silent day.
 
Even after my mother was gone,
the flowers did not surrender their colors.
 
When the wind came,
they leaned on one another’s shoulders
and called for my mother in quiet voices.
 
Since that day,
whenever I look at flowers,
I know their tiny petals are the first to reach out
and take my hand.