官封弼馬 Made Keeper Of The Horses
逐句解 Line by line
"The Jade Emperor sent down a proclamation; the Great White Planet came bearing the decree.
太白金星 is the planet Venus in its person as a heavenly official — the Jade Emperor's usual envoy, and the one who keeps suggesting that Wukong be bought off rather than fought.
"They invited me up to Heaven to take office and inherit a post; they made me Keeper of the Horses, which did not gladden my heart.
弼馬 is short for 弼馬溫, the stable post Wukong is fobbed off with — a job so junior it has no rank at all, which is the entire insult. 不 keeps bù before the level tone of 開.
"My first thought was revolt: I plotted from my mountain cave, and boldly raised troops to make trouble at the imperial stair.
興 is xīng, to raise or set going — 興兵 is to put an army in the field. The base reading offers the other tone, which is the 興 of high spirits.
"The Pagoda-bearing Heavenly King and his prince crossed weapons with me for one round, and came off wretchedly.
子 is zǐ here, a full syllable — 太子 is the crown prince, in this case Nezha, and the character is a noun rather than the light ending it takes in 虱子. 一 takes yí before the falling tone of 陣.
The poem is now retelling the opening of Wukong's career, compressed to four lines. Heaven decides the troublesome monkey is easier bought than beaten, sends Venus down with a commission, and gives him a job in the stables. He finds out what the job is worth and revolts.
弼馬溫 is one of the great insults in Chinese fiction and it works by rank. Every post in the celestial bureaucracy has a grade; this one has none, which means the holder is beneath the system entirely. The whole of Wukong's rebellion starts from being given a title with no number attached to it.
The line about Nezha is deliberately brief. 交鋒一陣盡猥衰 — one round and they came off wretchedly — dismisses in seven characters a fight that the novel itself gives a whole episode. He is not narrating. He is listing credentials.