On the clove branches
Text/Zhang Jinlan
(Web Photo)
Some people fall in love with a city because of a person, someone likes a song because of a story, and I like lilacs because I like a poem called "Rain Alley."
It was still the jade age, I was reading teacher training, and I read Dai Wangshu's poem in the textbook: "Holding an oil-paper umbrella, wandering alone in a long, long and lonely rain alley, I hope to meet a girl with a lilac like a grudge." She is the color of a lilac, the fragrance of a lilac, the sorrow of a lilac, and she mourns in the rain, and she mourns and wanders." At that time, I had not seen lilacs, I did not know what lilacs looked like, but because of this poem, lilacs were rooted in my heart, enchanting, beautiful, and fragrant in my heart. And the girl with the lilac-like grievance also aroused my infinite reverie, she must be combing two twisted braids, wearing a plain cheongsam, a pair of slightly furrowed willow eyebrows, and two eyes with a grudge.
A few years ago in the spring, I was walking around north lake, and when I reached the south shore of the lake, several flowering trees caught my eye. The trees are not large, and the tops of the branches are clustered with clusters of flowers dancing softly in the spring breeze. There are lilac, beautiful and romantic, plain white, fresh and elegant, but the flower shape is the same. Stop and look closely, the flower cluster is composed of small flowers, the flower has four petals, small and exquisite, chuchu moving. But at that time, I stood next to the lilac tree and didn't know that it was a lilac flower. Later, by chance, I saw a picture of lilac flowers on the Internet, and I suddenly realized that what I saw by the lake was lilac, the sad and fragrant clove in "Rain Lane", and the lilac that I had longed for for many years.
Since then, every spring I will worry about the lilacs on the south shore of the North Lake, about the time it should be the flowering period of the lilacs, I specially went to the south shore of the North Lake to see, and sure enough, the lilacs bloomed a beautiful smile under the bright sun in the spring wind. Her elegance and gentleness, her sad literary temperament, made me intoxicated. I, again and again, under the lilac tree, lingered, wandered...
I used to think that willow trees sprouted the earliest after winter, but in fact, they were not, and the earliest sprouts were lilac trees. I also stumbled upon this problem. It was the twentieth month of the previous year, I was walking around the lake, and when I passed the lilac tree, I suddenly rose up and walked to the tree, wanting to take a closer look at the tree in winter. This look was not tight, and it really surprised me, and the lilac tree had already sprouted tender green buds at this time. Spring has not yet stood, and the other trees are still dreaming of winter, and it is awake, awake alone, and it is quietly brewing spring while resisting the cold and loneliness.
I also know that white lilacs are more fragrant than lilacs. Lilacs are a faint fragrance, you have to instigate two nose wings, take two deep breaths, in order to smell, and white lilacs are involuntarily directly into your nostrils, overbearing intrusion into your lungs, you don't want to smell it. This also corresponds to what Zhang Chao of the Qing Dynasty said in "Shadow of Dreams" that "those who are delicate in flower colors are not very fragrant." Flowers, the lighter the color, the stronger the fragrance, the darker the color, the lighter the fragrance.
A few days ago, around the time of the spring equinox, when the spring sun was warm, I went for a walk by the lake again, passing by the lilac tree that I had known for several years. As I walked, I stared at the lilac tree full of new greenery. My footsteps did not stop, I walked six or seven steps, and I felt as if I had lost something in my heart if I passed by like this, and I finally folded back and walked to the near side of the tree to observe carefully. Hey! It had grown a bunch of flower bones, yellow-green, tender and tender, swaying gently in the gentle wind. I looked at this string of flower bones, and then looked at the string of flower bones, new and surprised. Thankfully stopped.
Look closely, the four petals of the lilac buds are stacked on top of each other, like an acacia knot, no wonder the ancient literati used the lilac knot to pin their infinite love for each other. Song Dynasty Wang Yan Ciyun "Acacia is only in: on the lilac branch, cardamom tip", the original lilac branch is a grain of acacia ah. In the Ming Dynasty, Yang Xunji's poem "Lovesickness and hatred on the branches of the spring wind, and the knot has not yet opened in the late autumn", and the acacia is easy to knot and is not easy to solve!
The shape of the lilac bud is also very similar to the sorrow of people, so the literati of the past generations have given the lilac a lot of grievances. "The blue bird does not pass on the letter from the clouds, and the lilac is empty and sorrowful in the rain", this is the melancholy of Li Jing, the lord of the Southern Tang Dynasty. "The frost tree has empty branches, and the intestines are broken lilac knots." This is the melancholy of the Tang Dynasty poet Feng Yanmi.
Compared with those lament poems, the Northern Song Dynasty Huang Tingjian's "double plate brocade with clove knots, narrow sleeves spring shirt licorice yellow" is ingenious, he compares the buckles on the clothes to the lilac knots, but no, the buttons embellished on the cheongsam, the hand-coiled knots are clearly a grain of lilac knots. The woman who came from the rainy alley in Jiangnan, wearing an oil-paper umbrella and style, the delicate coiled buckle embellished on the collar end of the cheongsam, buckled the woman's dignified and gentle.
When the spring breeze unbuttons the branches of the lilac tree, the beautiful light purple and white will sway on the lilac branches, and the pleasant fragrance will be sprinkled between heaven and earth.
【Author's Profile】Zhang Jinlan, a teacher at Gaotang First Experimental Middle School, likes words, likes to record life with words, and likes to use words to express life feelings.