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Celebrated Korean poems (28)

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A Legend

Shin Gyeong-Nim (1935 - )

He was always drinking,

he went mad, grew rowdy,

then finally the rascal died.

Up the mountain road running past

the village where I was born and bred

is an old tree that's a spirit shrine

with red and yellow strips of rag

hanging.

He became a ghost, squatting there cross-legged.

On summer nights all thick with mist

in bitterness, in bitterness

that rascal weeps.

In bitterness, in bitterness,

the old tree also weeps. That rascal

has come to life again, squatting there cross-legged.