The Cormorant Rock in the Middle of the River江中鸕鷀石
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 · 142 Chinese characters · reading time 1.4 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 6 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.
The light boat rocks and I give it over to the ripples,
and in the midst of it there is a strange rock whose name is Cormorant.
I guess at it thus: the cormorants, seeking fish and crabs,
called out noisily and flew together to the deep riverside,
and flapping about they wrongly touched the house of Fengyi (馮夷);
Fengyi grew angry and roared and raised up thunder and lightning,
and the wind snapped and the waves struck and both wings were broken,
so that half out of the waves it could not fly.
Its flesh was ground away and its marrow rotted and flowed off eastward,
and only the gaunt bones were left for nothing on the isle in the middle.
Moss encroached and sand roughened it, and it became hard stone,
its tail coiled in the mud and its head half afloat.
Were it not so, how in the misted waves
should its force seem undying and its head seem lifted up?
To dig out the strange and reckon up the different is all only a dream,
and to force a hole through it and make a poem is one more game.
Better to buy wine and fill the golden jar,
and to borrow you for a ladle,
and to set a parrot cup beside it,
and to drink on and on day after day and pour out my cares,
and laugh once, for all things are like floating dust.