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Too Many “Mothers”

This work portrays the deep grief of a fourth-grade child who suddenly lost his mother, alongside the classroom teacher’s response to the poem the child wrote. Through this episode, it explores the tension between technique and heart in education. The repeated use of the words “Mother” carries a cry of loss—raising the question of who is truly able to receive and understand it.

 

 Too Many “Mothers”

 

Mother was hit by a car.

Mother was laid in the hospital morgue.

We took Mother to the crematorium.

Mother turned into bones.

We placed Mother in a small box.

We set Mother before the Buddha.

I pray to Mother every day.

 

This is a poem by a fourth-grade child who lost his mother.

The homeroom teacher instructed, “You only need to write ‘Mother’ in the first line.”

The child refused to rewrite it.

 

The teacher could not receive the child’s deep longing for his mother.

Seizing the moment, the teacher taught poetic technique.

But the child’s aching sorrow appears in the repeated “Mother.”

 

Unaware of the sharpness of the child’s sensibility,

the teacher rushed toward form.

Overlooking the child’s desperate cry,

the teacher clung to technique.

The child refused to revise.

 

No matter how many times he calls for Mother,

he will never see her again.

I want to stand beside that unbearable grief.

What is truly being tested

is the teacher’s view of life and death.

 

I was made to know the fear of a teacher’s instruction.

With publication and praise in mind,

the teacher’s guidance was measured.

But the child saw through its quality.

Again and again, he voiced his profound sense of loss.

Refusing to yield, the child asserted himself.

The weight of the words he uttered

reveals his true heart.

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