On the Second of the Tenth Month, Composed While Coming Up from Gangnam into the Capital, and Shown to My Friends十月二日。自江南入洛有作。示諸友生。
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 · 139 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.
My house lies just south and north of Bongseong (鳳城),
yet my body has roamed three thousand li of southern passes.
Half a year of miasma and sweltering heat has changed my colour:
face blackened, temples yellowed, I look like a boatman.
All the more so since what is left of me is the dregs of illness;
my sallow skin hangs in wrinkles, which shames me the more.
Only my gaunt bones remain, higher than a mountain,
and in the tenth month a single shirt barely covers my thighs.
My kin and old friends will meet me and surely not know me;
my wife and child will take one look and at first shrink away.
I have seen enough of country towns with their faint hearth-smoke,
a few houses standing desolate, crumbled like a tortoise's shell.
How glad I am to see the capital's fine wind and weather,
ten thousand houses ranged in rows like the scales of a fish.
Li Yong (李邕) entering Luoyang is just as he always was,
but Sima Xiangru's roaming to Qiong (邛) is a dream after all.
This journey of mine is laughable and nothing to boast of,
so I send word to my friends: spare me your jokes.
The new wine of my house is just now being pressed in the vat,
and I shall call my guests in again and get drunk once more.