Jeongtong, the Abbot of Bogwang Temple, Keeps a Most Remarkable Goosefoot Staff and Asked Me to Sing of It普光堂頭精通師蓄藜杖甚奇。請予賦之。
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 · 112 Chinese characters · reading time 1.1 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 8 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 old goosefoot's leaves grow thick and blue-black,
and among them one branch is long, and straight besides.
A thousand years of earth-flesh has sealed its hardened root,
which hides deep the gyu-dragon's (虬) whiskers, gathered like thorns.
Our monk loves such matters and has set his mind on many of them,
so he cut it for a precious staff to help the strength of his legs.
Long of beak, with a lump at its neck, its tail thin and sharp,
it is just like a silver snake about to flee.
Twenty-two joints hang clustered like beads,
and on the road a ghost might seek it and not get it.
Even Mount Taihang (太行山) turns to a road level as a whetstone,
and again one feels the body light, as though wings were fastened on.
Wisteria is blunt and bamboo is fierce — what is there to prize?
Only this is easy, and so the monk holds it dear.
I ask the monk: will you part with it and give it to me?
I too of late have grown weak, and my illness is sore.