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.