Classic Poem

There were three girls in the Kalmoe house
we called “No-more-daughters's”:
Toksun,
Poksun,
and Kilsun;
and this time around another charcoal daughter
—which explains the family's god-awful name.
The father came home full of booze anger,
announced he'd throw out this good-for-nothing
woman who had nothing but daughters,
grabbed her by the hair of the head
—she was still in postpartum care—
knocked down the rotten fence on the way out
and burst into floods of tears. A capital sight!

The other side was that No-more-daughters's
red pepper paste was so unbelievably sweet
people came from Namwon and Such'ang
to find out how it was made.
Two or three of the red-pepper dragonflies
that filled the late autumn sky
were wont to sit on the lid of the
red-pepper paste pot on the neat crock stand.
The red-pepper paste was made by the dragonflies
and the girls' mother together!
Leastwise that's what the local women
said with a smack of the lips
when they came to draw water.

One day Sunch'ol's mum stole
through the bamboo grove to the women's quarters
to help herself to a bowl of the red-pepper paste.
So flabbergasted was she by the sight of
Toksun washing her luscious body, she cried:
“Sunch'ol-a, take Toksun to wife,
I never saw such a divinely-fleshed tit in my life!”