Poems of Dr. Nam Young-joo (South Korea)

 

Poet Dr. Nam Young-joo is a poet and a Doctor of Pharmacy. She received the New Writer’s Literary Award from Literary Batang, a monthly literary magazine. She graduated from Daegu Catholic University, formerly known as Hyosung Women’s College, and earned both her master’s and doctoral degrees from the College of Pharmacy at Duksung Women’s University. She also completed a program at the Graduate School of Environmental Studies at Seoul National University.

She has served as a lecturer at the College of Pharmacy at Duksung Women’s University and at Busan Women’s Junior College. She has also held various positions in professional pharmaceutical organizations, including serving on the Medical Insurance Policy Committee and the Education and Training Committee of the Korean Pharmaceutical Association. In addition, she served as a member of the Steering Committee of Yaksa Gongnon and as president of the Hyoyakhoe Alumni Association of Daegu Catholic University in Seoul.

She has also served as a judge for the National Art Exhibition of Korea (Kukjeon).

Her published poetry collection is Starlight Under the Microscope.

 

 

A Universe in a Single Pill

 Dr. Nam Young-joo

A small white planet, no bigger than a grain,

rests in the palm of my hand.

 

With a sip of water, it travels into the body

and disappears.

 

Dissolving in the stomach,

crossing the intestinal wall,

it boards the red current of the bloodstream.

 

At the doors of countless cells,

its invisible journey continues

until it finds the one door that is meant for it.

 

Too much of a medicine becomes a poison

too little may never reach its destination.

 

On the very narrow border where medicine and poison

are given different names,

the weight of a single pill can determine the measure of life.

 

The liver transforms what is foreign and sends it on.

The kidneys wash away what remains.

To stay alive, the body repeats the work of taking in and letting go.

 

At last, where the pill has disappeared,

one person’s day begins to move again.

 

What we swallowed

may have been more than medicine—

perhaps it was a small universe,

precisely designed to travel toward life.

 

 

 

The Shadow Called a Side Effect

 Dr. Nam Young-joo

Medicine does not enter the body

carrying only light.

 

Behind the bright face of its healing power

there follows a small shadow a side effect

we may have failed to read.

 

A single pill that brings peace to one person

may cause a serious ripple

in another.

 

The medicine bears the same name,

yet each body reads it in a different language.

 

Genes and age,

another medicine taken alongside,

even the years the body has lived through—

within each person a different history

has been written.

 

Therefore, prescribing medicine

is not simply a matter of reading the name of a disease.

 

It is to look closely at one person’s time,

to weigh what may be gained against what may be lost,

and to find the best balance

that can be allowed for that person.

 

Pharmacy does not record only the light.

 

It measures even the length of the shadow

that follows a single pill,

and only then does it place medicine

into human hands.

 

 

The Pharmacopoeia of the Himalayas

 - Jatamansi, the Fragrance of the Roots

 Dr. Nam Young-joo

The high mountains teach the roots

before they teach the flowers.

 

Between rock and wind,

clinging to a handful of earth,

Jatamansi hides its fragrance deep beneath the ground.

 

Those that have endured

for a long time in places unseen

each carry a fragrance of their own.

 

When a traveler climbing the mountain

lays down his weary heart,

a little root passes on to him the warmth of the earth.

 

Perhaps medicine is not only the strength

to overcome illness,

but also the quiet work of returning

a scattered body and mind to their proper place.

 

As the Himalayan night grows deeper,

the fragrance of the roots grows quieter.

 

Beneath the world’s highest mountains,

buried in the lowest place,

a single small page from a pharmacopoeia—

one that has watched over a life for a long, long time.