Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Latter Collection, Book 3
Written after watching a conjuring show觀弄幻有作
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Latter Collection, Book 3 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.
造物弄人如弄幻。達人觀幻似觀身。人生幻化同爲一。畢竟誰眞復匪眞。
The Maker toys with people as though working conjuring tricks And one who has seen through it watches the conjuring as he watches his own body A man's life and the conjurer's changes are one and the same So in the end what is real, and what again is not real
俯仰嚬伸具體微。孰將心匠奪天機。人緣一氣成蚩蠢。氣出還同罷幻歸。
Bending and leaning back, frowning and unbending, all are complete in that small body Who has stolen heaven's mechanism by the skill of his mind A man, taking one breath of vital air for his cause, becomes a thing that squirms And when the breath goes out it is just like the conjuring ending and being taken away