Storiesand

PoemsBy: Wilfred Emperado

Table of Content

The Tale of Woodcutter and The Tiger

When Wine at your House is ripe

Shhh*

Tree of unhappiness

Pomegranates

Girl in the Rain

The Tale of Woodcutter and The Tiger

  Korean folklore recalls the tale if a woodcutter who encounters a tiger in the woods . Fearing that he would soon be the tiger’s dinner, he exclaimed “You must be my long lost brother! Our mother cried for you when you left home. She had ready dinner for you every night ,waiting for your return . Sadly ,out mother has just passed away . How happy she would have been she known you are alive and well” . The woodcutter took out his hand knife and pretended to wipe at his eyes . The tiger turned away , as tears felldown his cheeks ,leaving the woodcutter unharmed …….

Every year thereafter , on Chesa , the memorial day of the woodcutter’s mother’s death , an offering appeared on her grave. Sometimes a peasant or even his mother’s favorite mountain berries .The woodcutter did not know where this offering came from . One year , the woodcutter noticed that that the costumary offering had not benn placed on his mother’s grave , and he wondered what had happened. Out of the bush , three baby tigers appeared carrying offerings. They approached the woodcutter and cried: “You must be our uncle! Mother tiger is gone now, and we know how important it is for her to honor grand mother by bringing an offering to her Chesa table beside her grave. We are here to bring offerings for our grandmother in loving memory of our mother”. The woodcutter noticed that his face had turned suddenly warm and realized that it was his own tear streaming down his cheeks.

When wine in your house is ripe

by: YugGim

When wine in your house is ripe,

Please ask me to visit you.

When flowers at my cottage bloom,

I will invite you to come.

And then let’s talk of the things,

Forgetting worries,

Over a hundred years

Tree of unhappinessKim sang-yong(1592 - 1637)

(Translated by Greame Wilson)

On broad leaves of pau-low-nia

The one and only tree

Where on the phoenix will set foot

The rain falls heartlessly.

 

The rain’s sad tapping overhead

Compounds my weight of grief.

Who now could have the heart to plant.

PomegranatesSin Hum(1566 - 1628)

(Translated by Greame Wilson) It rained last night, The pomigrenates

Redand orange-res

Have all burst into flower.

 

Not to be comfort,

I sit in this cool pavilion

Set in a lotus lake

And under its glass-bead curtains wait

Girl in the Rain

(18thcentury)(Translated by Greame

Wilson)Her violet cloak round her head,

As quik as she can

She runs through rain-fall to the pea colored

Village and a man,

 

What blandishments, I wonder,

What whispers, what untrue

But wonderful promises

Have soak that silly through.

Shhh*by Moon In-soo

I have been to his father’s funeral. He told me a story: he, who had passed his sixtieth year. Held his father beyond 90 and helped him urinate. Even though life’s important controls had left the old body, his mind was steel like a lantern. Afraid that the old man might feel hopeless, he helped him, half joking and half playing tha baby, saying “Father, shhh, shhh, all right, right you must feel good. “When he held his father, it was as if he enterd deep into the whole body. When he held his father like that as though giving back to th body, how much might the old man have tried to shrink himself to make himself smaller and lighter? His urine thread cut off frequently, but such a long thread that the son again and again tried to tie it down to the earth pitifully, but the father with difficulty might sever it now. Shhh,Shhh! The universe must be quiet.

Thank You