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Cut bamboo turned into a pipe is a flute to blow—
Above Paired-Phoenix Pool paired phoenixes are flying.
I’ll trouble you to travel south to Guizhou with this:
That for the governor, it’s like ten-thousand seasons.
赠马植
作者：峡中白衣
截竹为筒作笛吹，
凤凰池上凤凰飞。
劳君更向黔南去，
即是陶钧万类时。
A headnote with context would be nice, yeah. FWIW, Ma Zhi appears in records starting in 819 and died in 857. I don’t know whether this is the Paired-Phoenix Pool on the grounds of the Imperial Palace (previously met in 3TP #117) or another one. Idiom: I’ve been silently translating the more flowery official titles into something more obvious in English, but the governor’s title is an especially odd one, literally “pottery-thrower,” as in making a pot on a wheel—it’s supposed to suggest molding his populace. I’m assuming ten-thousand-or-so seasons is how long the governor must wait for the ghost’s arrival.
I see how the phoenixes are symbolically appropriate to the situation, but the metaphoric application of the flute-making is … obscure to me. Interesting, but obscure.
---L.
Above Paired-Phoenix Pool paired phoenixes are flying.
I’ll trouble you to travel south to Guizhou with this:
That for the governor, it’s like ten-thousand seasons.
赠马植
作者：峡中白衣
截竹为筒作笛吹，
凤凰池上凤凰飞。
劳君更向黔南去，
即是陶钧万类时。
A headnote with context would be nice, yeah. FWIW, Ma Zhi appears in records starting in 819 and died in 857. I don’t know whether this is the Paired-Phoenix Pool on the grounds of the Imperial Palace (previously met in 3TP #117) or another one. Idiom: I’ve been silently translating the more flowery official titles into something more obvious in English, but the governor’s title is an especially odd one, literally “pottery-thrower,” as in making a pot on a wheel—it’s supposed to suggest molding his populace. I’m assuming ten-thousand-or-so seasons is how long the governor must wait for the ghost’s arrival.
I see how the phoenixes are symbolically appropriate to the situation, but the metaphoric application of the flute-making is … obscure to me. Interesting, but obscure.
---L.