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) 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.
The Creator dwells in a far-off place;
and what is his shape like?
If you must have come into being of yourself,
then who is it that makes me sick?
The sage can use things as things,
and from the first is not used by them.
I am treated as a thing by things,
and my going and stopping do not come from me.
Meeting you, the hand of transformation,
I have been broken and harried to this pass.
The four great elements (四大) were not there to begin with —
where in the world did they come from?
Like a drifting cloud that rises and vanishes again,
in the end one cannot know whence they came.
Looked at deeply, all of it is empty;
what is there that is born, grows old, and dies?
I leave it all to what is so of itself,
following my nature and going along with the principle.
Tut, tut, you child of a Creator —
what has any of this to do with you?
Interlinear notes 2
丁酉九月
This was the ninth month of the Jeongyu year.
堆 — the source text has 「我皆堆自然」, but taking it as an error for 推, it was read as 「leave to」. — the translator