Written in Jest on Things That Cross the Heart違心詩戱作
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 · 84 Chinese characters · reading time 0.9 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Latter Collection, Book 1 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.
Even the small affairs of human life come out uneven,
crossing the heart at every turn, with nothing that fits.
In my prime the house was poor, and even my wife made light of me;
in my late years the stipend is thick, and singing girls would follow me.
The long rains most often fall on the day I go out to amuse myself,
and the days the sky clears are all the times I sit idle.
My belly is full and I lay down my spoon — and then comes the kid's meat;
my throat is sore and I shun drink — and then comes the deep cup.
I sell a treasure I had kept, and cheaply, and the price in the market rises;
my old illness has only just been cured, and a physician appears next door.
If even small affairs go athwart like this,
how could one ever hope to ride a crane to Yangzhou (楊州)?
Interlinear notes 1
楊州駕鶴 — From the old story of a man who, with a hundred thousand strings of cash about his waist, would ride a crane and go off as Governor of Yangzhou (the "crane of Yangzhou"); it speaks of the greed that would enjoy everything there is to enjoy. — Translator