孟郊诗

Poems of Meng Jiao


Index

借车

Borrowed Cart


借车载家具
家具少于车
借者莫弹指
贫穷何足嗟
百年徒役走
万事尽随花

Borrowed cart for moving furniture
But my stuff hardly fills a cart.
This borrower can't snap his fingers,
His poverty's not worth a sigh.
Been forced to walk in vain a hundred years
And all things pass away like flowers.

-- 孟郊


废话

"Can't snap his fingers" (莫弹指) meaning "can't order someone else to move the furniture with a snap of his fingers" presumably. Not that he's necessarily thinking metaphorically, but all that walking in vain is probably his long life of moving around looking for his right place. Which he may feel he will never find, having, in a sense, given up the search to hold down a job for his mother's and family's sake.

He's certainly not the only one who spent years looking out there for something out there can never have, as I can testify. But, from across the table in a wineshop, I bet I could get him to admit that the real walking he has done was up in the mountains and along the rivers and lakes, 笑傲江湖-style, and that none of that was in vain. If ever a place was right, there it was.


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