48. Lin Jiang Xian (Yan Jidao)

这首词从两种刚刚消散的状态起笔：梦醒了，楼台还高锁着；酒退了，帘幕还低垂着。梦与酒都退去，眼前留下的是封闭的空间——锁着的、垂着的，都关着门。接着一句“去年春恨却来时”给这满屋的安静定了时间：“却来”在这里带出一种回转、重来的感觉：这份恨不是新的，是去年已经恨过的那一种，今年此刻原样重来。词始终不说恨的内容，只交出它的守时——一个旧账准点抵达的瞬间。

The ci opens with two states that have just passed: the dream is over and the towers still stand locked; the wine has worn off and the curtains still hang low. With dream and wine gone, what remains is a closed space: towers locked above, curtains hanging low. The next line gives this stillness a time: “the sorrow of last year’s spring comes back now.” Here 却来 can be read as a turning back or return: the grief is not new, but the one already felt last year, coming around again at this moment. What the sorrow contains is never told. All the ci hands over is its punctuality — an old debt arriving right on time.

“落花人独立”五个字只交代一个人的位置：花在落，人在花下站着，动作到此为止。“微雨燕双飞”五个字只续燕子的事：雨很细，它们成双掠过。两句之间没有一个字点破彼此，可是“独”与“双”挨在同一口气里，燕子的成双便成了人孤单的注脚——不靠一个“愁”字完成。这一联原见于翁宏《春残》，晏几道整联承用（见注[1]）。承用没有减损它，倒像是一次检验：十个字放进词的口气里仍然各自站得住，也许正因为它们什么都不肯说破。

“Luò huā rén dú lì” gives five characters and one fact of position: petals falling, a person standing beneath them, and nothing more. “Wēi yǔ yàn shuāng fēi” stays on the swallows' side: the rain is fine, and they go past in pairs. Nothing in either line points at the other, yet dú, “alone,” and shuāng, “in pairs,” sit side by side in one breath, and the swallows' pairing becomes the annotation of the person's solitude without anyone writing the word sorrow. The couplet is not Yan Jidao's own: it appears intact in Weng Hong’s poem “Spring Wanes,” and this ci adopts it intact (see note [1]). The borrowing does not weaken the lines; it reads like a test — set into the cadence of this ci, all ten characters still stand on their own, perhaps precisely because they refuse to explain anything.

下半阕整个撑在“记得”两个字上。初见小苹[2][3]时，罗衣上有两重心字纹样，琵琶的弦上声声说着的正是相思——这两样都是那年初见时看见、听见的东西，此刻只存在于记忆里：衣饰与弦声越是具体，上半阕的锁与垂就越显得冷。收束交还给月亮：“当时明月在，曾照彩云归”。当年照人的月亮如今还在，它照过的，是一朵彩云归去的那一刻。彩云归去之后如何，词没有交代；“心字罗衣”的纹样作何解，彩云是否另有所指，这里都保留两可。词停在“月亮还在、人已不在”这个不对称上，不再多说一字。

The lower stanza turns on two characters: jì de, “I remember.” At the first sight of Xiao Ping [2][3], the silk robe bears a double 心 (xīn, “heart”) motif; the pipa strings voice longing note by note. These details survive here only in memory, and their vividness makes the locked towers and lowered curtains of the opening feel colder. The close returns to the moon: “the moon of that time is still there; it once shone on a colored cloud as it drifted home.” What became of the cloud is left unsaid. The heart-pattern’s meaning and what the colored cloud may refer to remain open in the text. The ci ends on an asymmetry: the moon remains, while the person does not.