Poem, Ghost in Tian Dacheng’s Home

A Luling merchant, Tian Dacheng, was sent on to a new town. A ghost there said to him, “I reside in Longquan House, which wants repairing. Loan me Dacheng’s central hall as a temporary residence, and also loan me the rear hall for my son’s wedding to the camphor-tree goddess.” The ghost was good at poetry, so Dacheng provided wine and put out paper and brush, and when the wine was consumed, the poem was completed, in all several tens of sheets written in the Liu style. [TN: read the poem now, then come back.] (Dacheng said,) “Might I ask your full name?” No answer. He sent (out?) the composed poem, and to the public merely didn’t proclaim (the author?). After the year was over, (Dacheng? the ghost?) expressed thanks and departed.

Naturally, you should grant I am a spirit expert—
And, too, that the affairs of mortals aren’t the same.
Seek to learn my house, and also my full name:
In all the world, the southern chief is one part red.

诗
作者：田达诚宅鬼
〈庐陵贾人田达诚，治第新城，有鬼自言：居龙泉舍，欲修葺，借达诚厅事暂住，又借其后堂为子婚樟树神女。鬼善诗，达诚具酒，置纸笔，须臾，酒尽诗成，凡数十篇，笔作柳体。或问其姓字，不言，赋诗寄言，众亦不谕，后岁馀，辞谢去。〉
天然与我一灵通，
还与人间事不同。
要识吾家真姓字，
天地南头一段红。

I did warn y’all, I don’t really have the background to do justice to some of these ghost poems. So many questions, and headnote prose that’s either disjointed or especially compacted Does Not Help. (What’s with the poem—is it somehow related to the wedding? Why send it and to whom? Who left after a year? What the heck?) I’ve found mentions of a longer prose telling of this story with somewhat different details, and without the poem. Ugh. Well, to annotate the obvious: Luling is in modern Jizhou, Jiangxi. “Liu style” is in the style of famed Tang calligrapher Liu Gongquan. In the five phases (aka elements) system, red is the color of the south. That said, the point of the poem’s last line whooshes so far over my head (could it be a riddle?), I’m not sure I’m even reading it correctly. Which is par for this whole garbled thing. 😕

—L.