This poem came about as I was practising how to write 觀 better for my Chinese calligraphy practice. Still much practice is needed. Sigh....
1 聆音察理曉哀樂 Listen to the sounds - the joys and pains be known,
2 聞章辨色見人心 Smell the essays to determine it tones and colors of the heart be seen.
3 凡性莫測何難解 Unfathomable mortal behavior is not difficult to gauge,
4 上流下落低處深 Like water flows from high to low, where the lowest is the deepest.
1. Taken from the Thousand Character Classic.
2. Also from the Thousand Character Classic and adaptation to an allusion from “Smelling Essays”, a story in “Strange Stories in a Chinese Studio”. Two friends went sightseeing in a mountain as they headed out for the Imperial Examinations. There they heard that a blind monk living there can tell how good an essay was written by smelling as it being burnt. Out of curiosity, they went to test the monk out. When the first essay was burning, the monk exclaimed that it was a piece of rapturous refinement and beauty that he had ever smelt. When the second one was burnt, the monk grew angry complaining why he was given such a sumptuous feast and now being served with a piece of crap. A year later, the one who wrote the foul essay became the Number One Scholar and since he was on his way back to his hometown, he decided to confront the monk for being a charlatan. The monk retorted that he was just commenting on the quality of essays but not on one’s fate! The moral of the story is that the blind can see better than those with eyes.
3. On the lines of, “it is easy to get rich in the stock market – just buy low and sell high.” The crux is just “when”.
4. 上流 also mean the “elite” – the superior man and 下落,“whereabouts”, “to mock”, “the base”, “the dregs”. The meaning of the last line is that even gentleman will fall from grace and beware that those with the basest character are “still water runs deep”.
It was one of those rare occasions that I had enough inspiration to compose two poems in a day!
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