Birthday poem · March 29Spring Equinox, the 4th solar term: day and night are equal.
Birth character
色 sè · colour
色 first meant the colour of a face; it came to mean colour and scenery.
春色滿園關不住
“But the spring that fills the garden can't be locked in” — Ye Shaoweng, ‘Visiting a Garden, No One Home’
The poem
“Visiting a Garden, No One Home” 遊園不值
- 應憐屐齒印蒼苔Perhaps they fear my clogs will mark the green moss;
- 小扣柴扉久不開I knock softly at the brushwood gate; it stays shut a long time.
- 春色滿園關不住But the spring that fills the garden can't be locked in —
- 一枝紅杏出牆來one branch of red apricot reaches out over the wall.
Why this poem
Ye Shaoweng finds a garden locked: "a spray of red apricot reaches over the wall".
This day in the Chinese calendar
Solar term: Spring Equinox.