A Lament for the Cricket That Hurries the Weaving促織歎
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 · 143 Chinese characters · reading time 1.4 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 7 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.
Last year the mulberry leaves in the garden were rich,
and the wondrous silkworms spun cocoons as big as houses.
We wove out cloud-brocade of five colours,
and did not wait for the cold insect to press us so hard.
This year the mulberries are old, withered and wilted,
and the starving worms lie stiff and give out no thread.
The whole household sits with folded hands awaiting the cold,
and at one cry of the weaving-hurrier we are stung with grief before anything else.
A thousand cries, ten thousand cries, and not one foot of cloth —
however bitterly you sing, what good will it do in the end?
In moonlit clumps the dew-wet leaves cannot bear the cold,
and you come in before my couch and chirp away for nothing.
Have you not seen how the very name "weaving-hurrier" is all in such haste?
There is not an inch of thread in the box, and no sound at the loom.
There is only a sick man's hair at his two temples,
where at every cry of yours one more thread comes up.
My tangled heart-strings are in disorder and will not be cut,
and what I weave in a single night is ten thousand scraps of sorrow.
An insect's cry is already worth nothing to me,
so I urge you: from now on, cry a little more slowly.