奈河橋詩 Verse on the Nai River Bridge
詩曰:诗曰:
逐句解 Line by line
A poem says:
A four-line verse to cap the bridge before the emperor is hurried on.
Now and again are heard the weeping of ghosts and the howling of spirits; the blood-waters churn in turbid waves ten thousand zhàng high.
神號, shén háo, is spirits howling — 號 here is háo, to cry out, not hào, a name or title. 萬丈, "ten thousand zhàng," is a stock exaggeration for enormous height; 丈 is zhàng, a unit of about ten Chinese feet.
Numberless Ox-Heads and Horse-Faces, ferocious, keep guard over the Nai River Bridge.
猙獰, zhēng níng, is fierce and hideous. Ox-Head and Horse-Face close the scene as they opened the Hall of Judgment — on permanent duty at the worst crossing in the world.
The closing quatrain boils the rhapsody down to one grim tableau: the howling of the damned, waves of blood at an impossible height, and Ox-Head and Horse-Face on their eternal watch.
It is the last and most concentrated image of the hell-tour before the emperor is moved on toward the City of the Wrongfully Dead.