啄木蟲 The Woodpecker
原來行者在他耳根後，句句兒聽著哩，忍不住飛將起來，又琢弄他一琢弄。又搖身一變，變作個啄木蟲兒。但見：原来行者在他耳根后，句句儿听着哩，忍不住飞将起来，又琢弄他一琢弄。又摇身一变，变作个啄木虫儿。但见：
逐句解 Line by line
Now Pilgrim, behind his very ear, had been listening to every word; unable to hold back, he flew up to peck at him once more.
耳根, ěr gēn, "the root of the ear." 琢弄, zhuó nòng, "to peck at, to pester" — 琢 read zhuó, properly the chiselling of jade, here the jabbing of a beak. The 兒 of 句句兒 is the light er; 聽著 takes 著 as zhe; 飛將起來 takes 將 as jiāng. He had every word of it, and he cannot let it go.
Again he gave his body a shake and changed into a little woodpecker.
啄木蟲, zhuó mù chóng, "the wood-pecking creature" — a woodpecker. The 兒 of 蟲兒 is the light er. Of all the shapes available to him, he picks the one whose entire purpose is hammering wood.
Behold:
但見, dàn jiàn, "and look" — the storyteller's cue again, and another poem follows.
Iron beak pointed and sharp, glossy red; kingfisher plumes gorgeous and gleaming bright.
翠翎, cuì líng, "kingfisher-blue feathers" — 翠 names both the bird and its colour, the blue-green that Chinese decorative art prized above almost any other. 紅溜, "glossy red."
A pair of steel talons keen as nails.
鋼爪, gāng zhǎo, "steel talons"; 利如釘, "sharp as nails." The metalwork imagery is piling up — beak of iron, claws of steel — for a bird a few inches long.
Belly empty — what matter, in the quiet of the wood?
腹餒, fù něi, "an empty belly"; 何妨, "what of it?" A creature content to go hungry so long as the wood is quiet.
Fondest of rotten stumps decayed and crumbling; disdaining most the old tree standing bare and lone.
枯槎, kū chá, a dead stump or broken branch; 伶仃, líng dīng, "gaunt and alone" — the word survives in 孤苦伶仃, utterly forlorn. The bird likes rot and dislikes bare old timber, which will matter in about ninety characters.
Round eyes, flicking tail — a nature quick and nimble.
圜睛, yuán jīng, "round eyes" — 圜 here stands for 圓 and is read yuán, not the huán of an enclosure. 丟靈, "quick, nimble."
The rat-a-tat of its pecking, a sound worth the hearing.
The poem signs off on the noise. 辟剝 is the rat-a-tat of pecking, a pair of characters chosen for sound rather than sense — the modern spelling of the same noise is 噼啪. 辟 is read bì here, its ordinary reading; the dictionaries give the character no reading built for onomatopoeia. 堪聽, "worth listening to" — and the poet plainly does think so.
Having heard the whole performance from a few millimetres away, Pilgrim finds he cannot resist, and changes again — from gnat to woodpecker. The new shape gets its own poem, all iron beak and steel talons and kingfisher plumage, a great deal of metal for a bird that will shortly be weighed at under a quarter-pound.
The choice of bird is the joke, and the poem knows it. A woodpecker exists to hammer at wood; it is fondest of rotten stumps and dislikes bare old timber. Pilgrim has selected, from everything that flies, the one creature whose whole nature is to drill into dead wood — and he is about to apply it to a sleeper whom everyone in the novel, in Chinese and in English alike, calls a blockhead. The verse's relish for the rat-a-tat of pecking is the sound of a plan being enjoyed in advance.