Things take a turn for the better

Jade Pavilion Songs (11)
Quan Deyu

My sash-knot slipped
    Last night: good luck!
        And lucky long-legs
            Flew today.
I’ll not neglect
    To rouge my face,
        Good fortune means
            He’s on his way.

权德舆  玉台体十二首·其十一
昨夜裙带解，今朝蟢子飞。
铅华不可弃，莫是藁砧归。

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After the desperation of last night, somehow, mysteriously, things are looking up. Even more suggestively, of the two good omens that she mentions, the first involves her kimono flapping open… I feel like there’s a backstory here that has been lost to time.

The lucky long-legs were a kind of bug.

In the last line, there’s a slightly gruesome bit of wordplay. The word for husband (“he” in my translation) is literally “grass mat on stone,” which means executioner’s block. The reason is that the word for executioner’s axe is fu鈇, which is pronounced the same as husband fu夫. (This is the same principle as cockney rhyming slang, like how “trouble” means wife, via the rhyme in the phrase “trouble and strife.”)

Interestingly, this is the one poem out of the series that was selected for inclusion in the great anothology 300 Tang Poems. This was put together in the 1900s, so at least at that time, critics thought there was something interesting going on here. One reading is that it’s a nice expression of irrational hope: in reality, the slipping of a kimono knot and the flying of bugs are just natural events, given meaning only by the desperation of the character.

But given its position in the 12-poem sequence, just after the depths of her despare, I wonder if there’s something else going on. I just don’t know what!

Here’s Cinix with the reconstructed reading: