28. Meeting Feng Zhu in Chang'an | Wei Yingwu

开头四句是一问一答。韦应物不问「你这些年怎么样」，只问「你来做什么」。客人的回答也短：采山、买斧。两个都是干活用的字，说得干净。这一问一答看着客套，其实是老朋友之间才有的问法——不用问近况，因为一看衣服上的雨就知道。

The first four lines are one question and one answer. Wei Yingwu does not ask how the man has been all these years, only what he has come for. The answer is short too: mountain wood, an axe. Both are words for work, and the reply is clean. The exchange looks formal, but it is how old friends talk — there is no need to ask after him, because the rain on his clothes already says it.

第三联忽然换了季节：花开、燕子育雏，都是暖的、活的、刚开始的。前面客人身上还带着雨，两下里一放，时间感就出来了——他走的路上还是冷天，到长安已经是春天。韦应物不点明这个落差，也不写冯著这些年过得如何，只把新和旧并排放着，让人自己去量。

The third couplet changes the season without warning: flowers opening, swallows raising young, all of it warm, alive and just begun. The guest still carries rain on his back from before, and set together the two fix the sense of time passed — the road he walked was still cold, and by Chang'an it is spring. Wei Yingwu does not spell out the gap or say how Feng Zhu has fared; he leaves the new and the old side by side for the reader to measure.

末联先给一句大的：「昨别今已春」，一别就是一季。紧接着收到极小的东西上，两鬓添了几缕白。「几缕」不肯给准数，既是没法数，也是不愿说尽。全诗从衣服上的雨起，到头发上的白止，写的都是身上看得见的东西，没有一句问到这些年到底发生了什么。

The last couplet gives something large first — a parting of only yesterday is already spring — and then narrows at once to something tiny: a few strands of white at the temples. The phrase refuses a precise number, both because it cannot be counted and because he will not say it all. The poem runs from rain on clothes to white in the hair, never leaving what is visible on the body, and never once asking what actually happened in the years between.