藍橋水漲 The Blue Bridge Waters Rise
逐句解 Line by line
At the Blue Bridge the waters rose and the thing could not be; / at the Buddha's shrine the incense sank and the good meeting came to nothing.
The 藍橋 is a story every reader knew: a man waited under a bridge for a woman who did not come, the river rose, and he drowned holding the pillar rather than break the appointment. It is the standing image for a tryst destroyed by circumstance. The second line pairs it with a meeting at a temple, and the sinking incense smoke says the same thing.
I set my whole mind on it, and today we part again; / in what year shall I meet with you once more?
Two readings close the quatrain. 著 is zhuó here, the literary reading meaning to apply or fix — 著意 is to set one's mind on a thing, to take it to heart. And 場 is cháng, the reading for a spell or a bout of something, the counting sense, rather than the chǎng of a place.
The Blue Bridge story is the one that gives the quatrain its weight. A man named Wei Sheng arranged to meet a woman under a bridge; she was late, the water rose, and he drowned rather than leave the spot. Confucius and Zhuangzi both mention him, one as a model of good faith and the other as an idiot.
The fiend has reached for it because it is the story of a love destroyed by something neither party controlled. That is how she understands what is happening to her, and she is not entirely wrong: nothing she did brought this on except wanting it.
And the last line is a genuine question, left open. In what year shall I meet you again. The novel gives her a farewell that assumes a next life, which is the one thing her own cosmology and Tripitaka's actually agree about.