Bajie said: 'And what's the good of sighing over it?'

且嘆他做甚: 'and what's the good of sighing over it?' Bajie has no patience with scenery. 甚 = shén, 'what.'

'Let's get on with our business.'

買賣, the 'business' again — he has not stopped thinking about the treasure for a moment. 快幹…去來: let's get on with it.

The Pilgrim, though moved, kept his wits about him and recalled the Tang Monk's dream, which said that the well lay beneath the plantain tree.

留心: kept his wits about him. He is moved by the ruin and still remembers the one useful detail from the drowned king's dream in the previous chapter — the well is under the plantain. 行 = xíng.

As they walked on, sure enough they saw a plantain, grown lush and thriving, unlike all the other plants and trees.

One plant thriving in a dead garden is a marker, and they both see it. 一株芭蕉: a single plantain, the broad-leaved banana relative. 生得茂盛: grown lush (得 = de).

Truly it was:

真是, 'truly it was' — the tag introducing the display poem on the plantain that follows, a long regulated piece in the 排律 form, where the parallel couplets simply keep going.

A single numinous shoot, gracefully fair, / by nature born with a hollow, empty core.

一種靈苗秀: one shoot with spirit in it, and a fair one. 天生體性空: hollow by nature. The plantain's stalk has no pith — it is leaf wrapped round leaf round nothing — which made it the stock emblem of Buddhist emptiness, 空. Peel it to find the core and you find there is no core, which is rather the point.

Stalk after stalk unfurls a sheet like paper; / leaf after leaf rolls up its fragrant cluster.

抽片紙…捲芳叢: each stalk draws out a sheet like paper, each leaf rolls up its fragrant cluster. Plantain leaves really were used as writing surfaces, and the poem will come back to that.

A thousand kingfisher-green threads, fine and slender; / one cinnabar heart, a single point of red.

翠縷…丹心: kingfisher-green threads for the leaf veins, a cinnabar heart for the unopened bud. Two colors, and the poem has painted the plant.

Forlorn, it grieves in the night rain; / wan and worn, it shrinks from the autumn wind.

The plantain personified — forlorn in the night rain, shrinking from the autumn wind. Its huge thin leaves tear easily, which is why it became the standard Chinese emblem of beautiful frailty.

Its nurture owes to primal, sturdy strength; / its planting, to the craft of Creation itself.

長養: to nurture and bring on (長 = zhǎng). 造化工 is the workmanship of Creation itself — nature as the craftsman who planted it.

Sealed in letters, it serves a wondrous use; / brushed and splashed, it works a marvelous art.

緘書…揮灑: 'sealed in letters' and 'brushed and splashed.' The leaf as writing paper again, this time in the calligrapher's hands. There is a famous story of a Tang monk too poor for paper who practiced his brushwork on plantain leaves, and the poem is leaning on it.

How could the phoenix-plume be its equal? / The simurgh's tail is far from its like.

鳳翎…鸞尾: the phoenix-plume and the simurgh's tail, two of the most beautiful things the tradition can name — and neither of them, the poem claims, is a match for a banana leaf. 得 = dé; 相 = xiāng.

Thin dew drips in glistening beads; / light mist enfolds it, faint and pale.

薄露…輕煙: thin dew and light mist (薄 = bó, 'thin'). 瀼瀼 is dew hanging heavy and dripping.

Its green shade curtains the window and door; / its jade shadow climbs the blind and lattice.

遮戶牖…上簾櫳: the shade curtains the doorway, the shadow climbs the lattice. Planted by a window on purpose, then — that green light through paper screens is one of the pleasures the plant was grown for.

It will not let the wild geese roost; / how could it serve to tether a jade-piebald steed?

不許棲鴻雁: too flimsy to bear a goose landing on it. 何堪繫玉驄: and far too flimsy to tie a horse to (繫 = jì, 'to tether'; 玉驄 is a jade-piebald mount). The poem is listing what the plantain is no good for, which turns out to be its best argument. 不 = bù.

Under frost-skies its form is withered; / on moonlit nights its hue is dim and blurred.

槁悴: withered under frost. 朦朧: blurred by moonlight. Two more ways of being faint.

It serves but to dispel the summer's heat, / and is fit still to shelter from the sun's glare.

What it is good for, modestly stated: shade in high summer, a screen against the glare.

Ashamed to lack the peach's and plum's bright color, / it stands neglected east of the whitewashed wall.

愧無桃李色 — 'ashamed to lack the color of peach and plum.' Peach and plum are the tradition's byword for showy popularity; the plantain has no blossom to speak of and stands out of the way by the whitewashed wall, unlooked-at. The poem has spent thirteen couplets praising a plant for being overlooked, which is exactly the note the chapter needs at this moment.