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 · 100 Chinese characters · reading time 1 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 16 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.
It cuts water out to make floating flowers,
and in a moment they become water again.
This is very like conjuring,
yet I think Heaven surely does not do such things.
I always suspected that rain, falling through the void,
was hard driven by the force of the bitter cold,
froze halfway down and congealed into flowers,
and merely chanced to resemble flowers of jade.
But if it is rain transformed,
then who is it that cut and carved them?
Look closely at the craft of the six corners:
surely Heaven's own skill has gone into it.
Does Heaven, then, work conjuring after all?
In the end I cannot fathom its intent.
Meeting the sun, they melt into juice
and become again the same as rainwater.
Though they would like to be flowers once more,
what can be done, now that they have soaked into the ground?
Heaven's workings are deep and hard to argue out,
so I will set out wine and simply get drunk once.