Maninbo by Ko Un Page A

lights were going out,
    no way things could be put right.
    So King Gyeongmyeong in the last stages of Silla
    had nothing to do but sit and drink.
    Earlier, a dog in a wall painting in the Temple of the Four Heavenly Kings barked.
    Monks recited sutras
    but again it barked.
    Then the bow-strings of the five guardians in the temple snapped.
    The dog jumped out of the wall painting, barked,
    jumped back into the painting.
    The seven years of King Gyeongmyeong,
    the three years of King Gyeongae
    were years of collapse and nothing else.
    King Gyeongmyeong asked, Am I a king or a scarecrow?
    Drunk,
    he took off his heavy crown
    and gaped at Mount Namsan in the distance,
    which came into sight then disappeared
    At night his only care was for one lady of the court, a newcomer.

Six Generations of Widows
    Among the eighteen sons of King Sejong the Great of the Joseon era,
    the fifth, Prince Gwangpyeong,
    like his father
    mastered the Chinese classics by fifteen,
    music and mathematics, too,
    but died at the age of twenty.
    The son he had fathered likewise died young.
    Yi Won-hu, the sixth generation descendant of Prince Gwangpyeong,
    married at fifteen,
    and in addition to his wife,
    so also his mother-in-law,
    his grandmother-in-law,
    great-grandmother-in-law were all widowed young.
    Those widows worshipped spirits:
    the spirit of the ground outside in the backyard,
    the home’s guardian spirit inside the house,
    Old Granny the kitchen spirit,
    the spirit of the outdoor privy,
    the Jade Emperor of Heaven and the King of the Underworld in the men’s quarters.
    Spirits everywhere:
    The Jade Emperor of Heaven,
    The Granny spirit of childbirth,
    The Mountain Spirit,
    The Farming Spirit,
    Wonsa spirits of Wishes,
    Joseong Daegam spirits of buildings,
    Jeseok spirits of Indra,
    Songaksi spirits bringing disaster,
    Mimyeong spirits of clothing,
    spirits everywhere…

Blind as a Bat
    King Sejo of the Joseon era left behind six dead ministers,
    and six living ministers.
    Kim Si-seup,
    one of the living,
    became a mendicant monk
    wandering the countryside.
    Yi Maeng-jeon,
    another of the living ministers,
    went back home to Seosan, South Chungcheong,
    and pretended to be blind,
    spending the rest of his life like that,
    thirty years,
    with a blind man’s staff.
    Then there was Cheong Rong who pretended to be deaf.
    Gwon Jeol too,
    after Sejo’s bloody coup,
    pretended to be deaf.
    He even used signs to communicate with his family.
    Nam Hyo-on
    and his son Nam Chung-seo
    pretended to be insane.
    If the weather was bad, they laughed:
hee hee hee
.
    Even before the weather grew bad they would smack their lips:
hee hee hee
.
    When swallows perched on the washing-line,
    laughing
hee hee hee
, they sipped wine.

Ten Eyes
    The man with ten eyes,
    with twelve eyes –
    when the moon rises
    he looks up at the moon,
    at the stars…
    He looks up at this star
    and that,
    even the darkness between the stars.
    He can never focus on any one thing,
    O Gil-hwan
    with his yellowish eyes.
    If someone asks:
    Hey, Gil-hwan, what did you see last night?
    Ummm, I saw everything,
    saw everything,
    so I don’t know what I saw.

A Kkokji Beggar’s Values
    Gangs of homeless beggars always had a leader, a
kkokji
.
    Kkokji
had five values to maintain.
    Above all,
    the gang should not beg from
    widows,
    widowers,
    homes that had lost parents early.
    That was called Benevolence.

    If a family that has been generous with food loses someone,
    the gang should help carry the bier.
    That was called Righteousness.
    Gangs should not covet each other’s territory.
    That was called Trust.
    If the
kkokji
died
    the gang should observe three years of mourning.
    That was called Decorum.
    The last was called Sense of Shame:
    feeling shame at the sun setting in the west
    when they stop being beggars and close their eyes.
    In the late Joseon period,
    the very last, rotten years of Joseon,
    it was a poignant task
    to rule the world as the beggars did.
    So, was putrefying