Pilgrim waited a long while and still she did not appear. Growing anxious, he said: "Sirs, take word in for me — if it is delayed, I fear for my master's life."

心焦, anxious; 遲了 了 the aspect particle le. Wukong's impatience is the motor of the scene: it is what drives him past the attendants and into the grove uninvited.

The Devas said: "We dare not report you. The Bodhisattva's charge was only to wait until she comes out of herself."

哩 the vernacular final particle li. The attendants' refusal is the obstacle that Wukong, characteristically, simply overrides.

Pilgrim was hasty by nature; how could he wait there? He sprang up in a bound and went straight in.

那裡等得: 那裡 rhetorical, 那 nǎ — "how could he wait?", a negation as a question; 得 dé, potential. The impulsiveness is essential character, and the verse will make it the first thing it says of him.

Ah!

噫 is the vernacular interjection of wonder, standing here as its own clause. The colon-marked exclamation opens the descriptive verse — ten couplets of the Bodhisattva as Wukong bursts in upon her.

This Handsome Monkey King, hasty of temper, bold as a magpie;

鵲薄: 薄 read báo in the vernacular sense of thin or slight — 鵲薄 is a colloquial binome for flighty, rash, quick-tempered. The portrait opens not with Guanyin but with Wukong's rashness, which is what has brought the reader into the grove.

the Devas could not hold him, as he made to stride within.

蹕 (bì) properly means to clear the road for a royal progress; here it is stretched to Wukong's headlong entrance, an ironic dignity. The rhyme-word governs the couplet.

Dragging his steps into the deep grove, he opened his eyes and stole a look:

拽步: 拽 read zhuài, "to drag, to stride" — pypinyin gives zhuāi, and the graph is corrected at every occurrence. 偷覷著: 覷 qù, to peer; 著 durative zhe.

from afar he beheld the Reliever of Suffering, seated cross-legged on a worn rush mat.

遠觀: 觀 guān, to behold. 救苦尊, the Reliever of Suffering, is Guanyin's epithet. 殘箬: 箬 (ruò), a broad bamboo-leaf, here the mat she sits on — she is at ground level, not on the lotus dais.

Idle and loose, she had shrunk from dressing her hair; her face and features were soft and lovely still.

懶散: 散 sǎn, the adjective "loose, idle." 綽約: 綽 chuò, graceful — 綽約 is the classical binome for supple beauty. The couplet marks the astonishing informality: the Bodhisattva undressed, unadorned.

Her hair was gathered loosely in a single coil, not yet bound up with its tasselled net;

散挽: 散 sǎn again, adjectival. 纓絡 (= 瓔珞), the jewelled net or chaplet that would ordinarily bind and crown the hair. Its absence is the point — she has none of her regalia on.

she wore no plain blue robe, but a small close-fitting jacket bound to the body;

素藍袍, the plain blue robe of her usual iconography; 小襖, a short everyday jacket. The verse strips her, item by item, of the entire apparatus of her images.

a brocade skirt loosely sashed at the waist, and a pair of feet left bare.

赤了一雙腳: 赤 "bare," 了 the aspect particle le. Bare feet on a bodhisattva are startling in the iconographic context — the mark of complete unpreparedness, caught at private work.

No embroidered stole across her shoulders; her two arms bright and bare.

臂膊: 膊 bó, the upper arm. 精光, quite bare. The catalogue of what she is not wearing has run nine couplets; the tenth will finally show what she is doing.

In her jade hand she held a steel knife, and was paring strips of bamboo skin.

削: 削 xiāo in the sense of paring or whittling. 竹皮, the outer skin of the bamboo. The last line delivers the image the whole verse has withheld: the Bodhisattva of Mercy, undressed and barefoot on a rush mat, whittling bamboo with a kitchen knife.