Banyan Leaves Fall in Liuzhou

Lines 1–2 · Spring feels out of season

宦情 and 羈思 name the cares of office and the longing of someone away from home. 共 lets both contribute to the opening heaviness, and the repeated 悽 intensifies it. 春半 and 如秋 work together. The speaker knows it is halfway through spring, which is precisely why it feels disorienting to find signs that resemble autumn. The title uses the traditional calendar’s second month.

Lines 3–4 · What the rain leaves behind

過雨 places the view after a spell of rain. The pair 百花盡 and 榕葉滿庭 gives two opposite results in neighboring lines: flowers are spent, fallen banyan leaves fill the yard. The title confirms the leaves have fallen. Read 鶯亂啼 aloud against that still courtyard. The orioles provide a sound associated with spring, but 亂 makes the calls seem disordered to the listener. The seasonal comparison stays unsettled right to the last word.

This seven-character quatrain begins with inward feeling, then supplies the outward evidence. The first two lines explain confusion; the last two let the reader experience it. The repeated 悽悽 makes the opening insistently heavy before the noisy birds disturb the end.

See jueju for the larger formal pattern. Pinyin gives modern Mandarin pronunciation; a historical level/oblique grid is not inferred from those modern tones.

Liuzhou was a southern posting in Liu Zongyuan’s career. The particular contrast between familiar seasonal expectations and local vegetation matters more than a generic statement that falling leaves mean sadness. The poem can register both real weather and the emotional difficulty of living elsewhere.

Continue with Liu Zongyuan and the nature reading path. Compare Peach Blossoms at Dalin Temple and Viewing Mountains with the Monk Haochu using the reading connections below.