孟郊诗
Poems of Meng Jiao
Index
送丹霞子阮芳颜上人归山
Escorting Vermillion Dawn monk Ruan Fangyan back to the mountain
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松色不肯秋 玉性不可柔 登山须正路 饮水须直流 |
Color of pines not ready for autumn. Their jade-green nature cannot soften. One must climb the mountain by the right path, Drink from the river by flowing with it. |
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倩鹤附书信 索云作衣裘 仙村莫道远 枉策招交游 |
The beautiful cranes cry out their agreement As a lonely cloud sew its fur clothes. The immortal village cannot be far away but Wrong principles will estrange us from them. |
-- 孟郊
废话
Meng Jiao -- Wilderness Guide (again). Keep in mind he is in his fifties as he leads all these people over lake and river, marsh and mountain.
The last two lines are interesting. The "immortal village" is both a spiritual goal and a social goal. One tries not merely to "get to Heaven" but to be worthy of those already there. So the penultimate line is more or less "Heaven cannot be far away."
The last line begins with "bent staff" or "relying upon wrong principles." Zhao (招) is a grab-bag of multiple meanings and uses. It is also the single value in simplified characters for at least three traditional ones. (This many-to-one mapping is a form of cultural destruction.) In this line, it is both "mocks" and "tricks." Perhaps a nuanced combination of the two. And in the end we have 交游 or "those with whom we have friendly relations." So altogether we have "Relying and acting upon wrong principles we mock and are tricked out of our relations with those who express the right principles." And all this in only five characters.