Thanking Master Gyeom, the Elder Dwelling at Jingu, for the Gift of Silk Floss謝珍丘住老謙公惠綿
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 · 110 Chinese characters · reading time 1.2 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 14 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 people of the south, raising the spring silkworms,
strip bare the branches of a thousand mulberry trees.
If by ill luck the worms die and stiffen,
not a fraction of thread is got.
By this I know that in one handful of floss
the labor of the silkworm women is without end.
How much more when the floss is washed in water
and hands are given over to cracking like a tortoise's shell.
Washed, it comes at last to the color of snow,
and the heart that cherishes it is truly beyond measure.
I thank the Zen master, who thought of my cold
and at once sent a white-footed monk running.
He came without minding the calluses layered on his feet,
and furnished me to hold out through three winters.
At last the cold of an old man who had been like ice
became as blithe as climbing a terrace in spring.
Though my name is Gentleman of the Secretariat (省郞),
in truth I was frozen and my skin was cracked.
Had there not been this warmth,
could I have been without the grief of ending the year?
Though the day come when floss is held to my nose,
how should there ever be a time when I dare forget?