浣溪沙. 游蕲水清泉寺 A visit to the Clear Stream Temple

浣溪沙. 游蕲水清泉寺

（游蕲水清泉寺，寺临兰溪，溪水西流。）

原作：苏轼（ 1082）

英译：闵晓红(2022)

山下兰芽短浸溪，

松间沙路净无泥。

潇潇暮雨子规啼。

谁道人生无再少？

门前流水尚能西！

休向白发唱黄鸡。

A visit to the Clear Stream Temple

-       to the tune “The Washing  Sandstream“

(Today, in Qishui County, I visited the Clear Stream Temple, which overlooks Orchard Stream at the foot of the hill. The river flows westward.)

Chinese original by: Su Shi

English Version by: Julia Min

Down the hill, along the silver sandy reach,

Young orchids dip lightly into the stream.

A sand path winds into the pine trees, mud-free.

Dusk drizzles, softening the cuckoos’ melodies.

Who said time cannot go back to youth, to teens?

Look here, westward flows the Orchid Stream!

Do not sigh over your greying hair. No need.

It’s just a daily fear of the cock’s crow you feed.

Notes:

1.     ‘cuckoos’ melodies: implying a traveller’s homesickness in Chinese culture;

2.     ‘westward’: most rivers in China flow from west to east, with the Yangtse and the Yellow River both sourced in the Himalaya region;

3.     ‘the Orchid Stream’: named in the Tang dynasty for the wild orchids growing like endless clouds along the river’s wet sandy belt. It was later changed to Xishui River. Interestingly, the name Orchid is still used today for the lower part of the river until it joins the Yangtse River;

Appreciation:

The year 1082 may have been the most productive of Su Shi’s life. For more than a thousand years, the closing lines of this poem have been recited whenever one mourns the passing of spring or the advance of age. Su Shi’s answer is gentle, almost playful: it is not time that weighs upon us, but the anxious heart that wakes too early.

Standing before the temple, he felt light-hearted and joyful at the mesmerising sight of a river flowing from the sunrise in the east toward the sunset in the west. In that moment, his inward eye, suddenly exhilarated, arrived at a new understanding of life—one that lifted the spirit and brought a quiet, blissful joy.

This riverside town is also my birthplace. I spent my childhood and school days walking along a broad sandy reach much like the one Su Shi describes. The landscape might have changed a lot since Dongpo’s days, but the river, the orchids, the long, wide sandy reach mottled by rocks during the dry season, the misty distant hills to the east where the sun rose on my morning walk to school, and the many murmuring streams flowing down from the hilly riverbanks remain. The river was clear enough for drinking; orchids were few, but wildflowers thrived along the shallows and on exposed sandbanks. In the east, misty hills caught the first light of morning when I crossed the river to school. Streams murmured down the slopes. The temple still stands today, yet the clear water, the orchids, the pines, and the cuckoo calls are gone. The river flows on, thinner now, as so many rivers do.

Sometimes I wonder what Dongpo would say if he returned. And yet, in reading and translating his poem, I find that moment again: orchids fluttering, water flowing west, fear loosening its hold. Across centuries, the human heart still listens—and nature still answers.

Reference:

1. Blooming Alone in Winter by Gordon Osing, Julia Min and Huang Haipeng，published by the People's Publication House Henan Province in 1990 (《寒心未肯随春态》戈登.奥赛茵，闵晓红，黄海鹏)（"At the foot of the hill, sweet shoots of thoroughwort root in the stream;/Off into the pines goes the sand road that never is mud./Dusk and the rains are incessant; the cuckoo gives forth./Who says, when all's said, you can never again be young?/Back to the west flows the River, past this temple's porch,/So White Hair, why hasten the morning with old rooster's song."）

2. Picture by An Tian

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