The Switch English Translation

에클레시아(Yun Eunhe)

One summer night.

when the stars scattered bright across the sky,

I was receiving the blows of my mother's switch.

I was not so yong then,

yet I cannot remember why -

only my mother's shout remains,

sharp and straight as her nature.

when I was very small,

even the sight of the switch made me tremble,

as though the pain had already arrived -

but as I grew,

even while the blows fell,

at some point I stopped running away.

The stars of the night sky were clearer than glass,

and the handful of houses made a village -

perhaps because she had longed for a son late in life

and bore me as her youngest -

from behind, her voice rose louder still.

Perhaps because her heart ached even as she raised the switch -

why do you just stand

there taking it, why won't you at least run away?

That was what she said. And that was the

heart of a parent. The wrist that had to lift the switch. The heart that had to lift it too.

Now that my parents are old,

if the switch were raised again,

if there were cause to receive its blows -

before the pain settles in the chest

and bruises bloom inside,

step away for a moment, yet -

but do not hide for too long.

They will exhaust themselves searching.

Simply -

do not make them wait

even past the hout before a meal.

My mother,

even as she struck with the switch,

even as she taught me what was wrong -

was weeping inwardly

for fear her child would hurt.

Whether you bow down,

repent, and ask forgiveness -

or slip away for a little while

and find your way back, no matter what -

you must live giving

at least the smallest measure of devotion.

From behind she called out:why won't you run, why just stand there

taking it?-and yet it was I who drove a great nail into my parents'

hearts and left them bruised and bleeding.

2026 에클레시아(Yun Eunhe) CCBY-NC-ND-4.0

「The Switch」— English Literary Review

에클레시아 (Yun Eunhe)

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✦ Literary Review — Between the Wrist and the Heart

Before it is an instrument of punishment, the switch is a language of relationship. In The Switch, 에클레시아 takes us into the chamber of a childhood memory and reads it again from the other side — and in that rereading, reveals how deeply love and wound are woven into one another.

The poem opens with a sensory world: a summer night, stars clearer than glass, a handful of houses forming a village. Into this still, luminous scene enters the mother's shout and the switch. Beauty and pain share the same breath. What the speaker cannot remember is the reason — the offense has dissolved — but what remains is sound and light. This, the poet seems to say, is how childhood survives in us: not as explanation, but as sensation.

The poem's quiet turning point arrives without announcement. The child who once trembled at the mere sight of the switch has, somewhere along the way, stopped running. The poet does not explain why. That silence opens a space for the reader to enter — is it resignation? a wordless confrontation? the beginning of understanding? — and each reader fills it differently.

The mother's response is the poem's great paradox. She shouts louder: why won't you run, why just stand there taking it? Here the logic of punishment folds back on itself. The hand that raises the switch is the hand that most wishes it did not have to. She weeps inwardly while she strikes. To love a child in that era, in that way, was to speak in the grammar of severity while meaning something else entirely.

The second movement carries the poem into the present. The parents are old now. The conditional — if the switch were raised again — is not really hypothetical. It is confession dressed as imagination. The speaker instructs, gently and precisely: step away for a moment, but not for too long. Do not make them wait past mealtime. These are not lofty moral proclamations but domestic, human-scaled acts of filial love — and they carry more weight for it.

The final lines complete what the first movement left open. The mother wept inwardly while lifting the switch. And yet the deeper wound, the poem confesses, was driven by the child — a great nail into the heart, leaving bruises that no switch could match.

The Switch is a poem about the way love, in certain lives and generations, can only speak through the language of discipline — and about the long, slow work of learning to recognize that language for what it was. The mark of the switch fades. The nail, driven later, stays. And the poem itself becomes an act of removal: slow, careful, offered too late but offered nonetheless.

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© 2026 에클레시아 (Yun Eunhe) | CC BY-NC-ND 4.0