In Reply to Vice-Magistrate Chang

By Wang Wei

In these twilight years, I love tranquility
alone. Mind free of all ten thousand affairs,

self-regard free of all those grand schemes,
I return to my old forest, knowing empty.

Soon mountain moonlight plays my ch'in,
and pine winds loosen my robe. Explain this

inner pattern behind failure and success?
Fishing song carries into shoreline depths.


Translated by David Hinton
From 'The Selected Poems of Wang Wei'

Wheel-Rim River

By Wang Wei


5 Deer Park

No one seen. Among empty mountains,
hints of drifting voice, faint, no more.

Entering these deep woods, late sunlight
flares on green moss again, and rises.


18 Magnolia Slope

Lotus blossoms adrift out across treetops
flaunt crimson calyces among mountains.

At home beside this stream, quiet, no one
here. Scattered. Scattered open and falling.


Translated by David Hinton
From 'The Selected Poems of Wang Wei'

Hearing an Oriole at the Palace

By Wang Wei

In spring trees shrouding palace windows,
a spring oriole sings dawn light into song.

It sets out to startle the world, stops short,
flutters here, there. Return impossibly far,

it hides deep among dew-drenched leaves,
darts into blossoms and out, never settled.

We wander life, no way back. Even a simple
birdcall starts us dreaming of home again.


Translated by David Hinton
From 'The Selected Poems of Wang Wei'