司空圖二十四詩品《委曲》 / Sikong Tu's Twenty-Four Classes of Poetry, 17 - "The Winding Way"

Poem #17 has one of my favorite images thus far: the "blue-green path coiled like sheep intestines." This path winds through the 太行山 Taihang mountains, which are situated in northern China. The 羌 Qiang people, however, hail from southwest China, these days primarily living in Sichuan. (You can hear the Qiang flute here.) This sort of spatial juxtaposition isn't that uncommon in Chinese poetry, but I wonder why Sikong Tu chose these particular mountains and this particular instrument and people. Maybe he heard such a flute at a moment that illustrated "effort at the right time," and it ended up being just the right image he needed for this poem.

The 鵬 peng bird appears, perhaps most famously, in 莊子 Zhuangzi, the next most famous/important Daoist text after the 道德經 Daodejing. Due to its great size, it's often compared to the roc, another giant mythical bird.

May you all know roundness and squareness alike, and take care, folks.

微臣

史大偉

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委曲

司空圖

登彼太行

翠繞羊腸

杳靄流玉

悠悠花香

力之於時

聲之於羌

似往已回

如幽匪藏

水理漩洑

鵬風翺翔

道不自器

與之圓方

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"The Winding Way"

Sikong Tu

Climbing Mount Taihang:

blue-green path coiled like sheep intestines,

dark clouds a sort of jade,

faint hint of fragrant blossoms

Effort at the right time:

sound of a Qiang flute,

seemingly going but already returning,

remote, but not hidden

Water churns with eddies and currents,

mythical peng bird soars on the wind:

Dao is not a thing unto itself,

but knows roundness and squareness alike