Classic Poem

(In the storytelling rhythm of P'ansori )

As I open the mirror and enter,
my mother is seated inside the mirror, and
as I open the mirror and enter again,
mother's mother is seated inside that mirror, and
as I push the mirror where mother's mother sits, and
cross the threshold,
mother's mother's mother grins in the mirror, and
as I poke my head through the grinning lips of my
mother's mother's mother,
inside that mirror, my mother's mother's mother's
mother is seated looking younger than I,
with her back turned toward me, and
as I open that mirror and enter,
and enter again,
yet enter once more,
inside the mirror growing darker and darker
all mothers of the ancestral line sit and
all the mothers, they leap at me
murmuring or yelping, mommy, mommy,
crying out for milk with their lips puckered up, but
my breasts run dry, and instead, somebody keeps
blowing air into my intestines and
my belly swells up larger than a balloon
and so it floats and wafts here and there on the sea, and
inside the mirror, it's so very wide and vast that
I can't find even a straw to grab onto, and
from time to time, lightning flashes through my body,
and
every time I dive down into the sea,
at the bottom of the sea, the shoes
of all the mothers up on the land
are quietly dissolving away, and yet, again.
lightning from a clear sky.
Lights out. Darkness in heaven and earth.
At that moment, the mirrors collapse before me, all at
once, and
as they break, they spew out one mother and
many people in white, with gloved hands, who
remove the debris of mirrors and lift up
the mother of all my mothers, blood-stained and with
her eyes shut,
and say, it's a princess with all ten fingers!