The sun goes down and one star comes out ahead of the others, low in the west, alone and very bright while the sky still holds some blue. My grandmother called it 개밥바라기, gaebapbaragi — near enough to “the one waiting on the dog's supper.”
The name comes from the hour. It arrives about when a dog starts getting hungry for its evening bowl. It is not a star at all, of course. It is Venus, and the same planet rising in the east before dawn gets a different name altogether: 샛별, saetbyeol, the morning star.
I used to squat down beside her and stare at it a long while, trying to work out whether it really wanted any supper.
What stays with me is that a language went to the trouble of giving one planet two names, and that one of them reached all that way up and brought it down next to a dog's dish.
It was out again this evening. Someone is closing the day by it. On the other side of the earth someone is opening one by the same light, and calling it something else.