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Singing of Forgetting詠忘

Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) 東國李相國集 · Yi Gyubo · Compiled 1241 (Goryeo, 28th year of King Gojong); revised and enlarged 1251 · 1 passages · 40 Chinese characters · reading time 0.4 min

Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 1 The collected writings of Yi Gyubo of Goryeo, gathered and cut in woodblock by his son Yi Ham in 1241 and revised and enlarged by his grandson Yi Ikbae in 1251. It holds poems and rhapsodies, memorials and reports sent up to the king, records written for temples and pagodas, stele and tomb inscriptions, letters and prefaces, and the state letters that passed to and from the Mongols during the invasions. The Lay of King Dongmyeong, which sings the founder of Goguryeo, stands in volume 3 of the first collection, and the daily life of a man who called himself the White Cloud Layman — with his wine, his zither and his verse — fills the later collection. The book closes with the last poem he wrote as his eyes failed and he laid down the brush, and with the dirge and tomb inscription others made for him after his death.

世人皆忘我。四海一身孤。豈唯世忘我。兄弟亦忘予。今日婦忘我。明日吾忘吾。却後天地內。了無親與踈。

The people of the world have all forgotten me, and in the whole realm this one body stands alone. How should it be only the world that forgets me? My brothers too forget me. Today my wife forgets me, and tomorrow I shall forget myself. After that, within heaven and earth there will be no closeness and no distance at all.