鹧鸪天
顾太清
冬夜听夫子论道，不觉漏三商矣。盆中残梅香发，有悟赋此。
夜半谈经玉漏迟，
生机妙在本无奇。
世人莫恋花香好，
花到香浓是谢时。
蜂酿蜜，
茧抽丝。
功成安得没人知。
华鬉阅尽恒沙劫，
雪北香南觅导师。
Zhegu tian
Gu Taiqing
On a winter’s night, I sat listening to my husband discourse on the Way. Before we had noticed the hour, midnight struck. A withered plum tree in a pot emitted sweet scent; I felt an Awakening, and so wrote down this lyric.
Midnight talk on sutrasjade water clock drips slow.
Life’s greatest secrets just where no wonders reside.
Worldly folk, don’t cherish the finery of flowery scents:
When flowers smell sweetest, they begin to wither away.
Bees brew up honey; silkworms spin out silk.1
When the task gets finished, how could no one realize?
Withering braids have witnessed every Eon of Endless Sands; 2
North of Snow and South of Scent, I’ll seek a dharma guide.3
1. These lines recall a couplet from Bo Juyi’s allegory “Qin chong shi’er zhang”: “Silkworrms age, cocoons finished not to shelter themselves; / Bees go hungry, honey matures given to someone else.”
2. The Buddhist simile for time calls it infinite as “the sands of the Ganges”; the Chinese call Ganges the “Eternal River.” ‘‘Withering braids / floral garland” (huaman: Sanskrit kusumamala) denote the flowers decorating Buddhist altar idols and suggest Gu’s graying hair and perhaps the withered plum branches as well.
3. To Indian Buddhists, “South of Scents [the Malabar Hills] and North of Snows [the Himalayas]”conveyed a world beyond the mundane.
（David McCraw 译）
