Wang Wei

Wang Wei was already a successful court official in the High Tang when the An Lushan Rebellion started, a military uprising that spilled into a civil war and cleaved the country’s structure and population over the next eight years. When the rebels captured the capital during the height of the rebellion, they captured Wang with it. He pretended to be deaf so he wouldn’t have to serve, but the rebels liked him so much they gave him an official title anyway. When the rightful emperor regained power a year later, Wang was accused of treason, but poems he wrote during his captivity were used as evidence of his loyalty and he was pardoned. Critics of Wang called his acquiescence to the rebels cowardly because he didn’t choose death. Apologists said he was too far above the comings and goings of the world to care. In either case, the whole affair spoiled Wang’s appetite for worldly matters, and he spent more time at his large estate on the bank of a river where he had once composed his best poems and paintings, delicate inky landscapes that were as sparse and influential as his poems, though now only copies and old photographs of these paintings survive. The poems are still here, of course.

Nobody in sight on the empty mountain
but human voices are heard far off.
Low sun slips deep in the forest
and lights the green hanging moss.

Bells stir in the mouth of the gorge.
Few fishermen and woodcutters are left.
Far off in the mountains is twilight.
Alone I come back to white clouds.
Weak water chestnut stems can’t hold still.
Willow catkins are light and blow about.
To the east is a rice paddy, color of spring grass.
I close the thorn gate, seized by grief.

I dismount from my horse and drink your wine.
I ask where you’re going.
You say you are a failure
and want to hibernate at the foot of Deep South Mountain.
Once you’re gone no one will ask about you.
There are endless white clouds on the mountain.

Silken willows along the meandering river are lines of smoke.
With warm air, water of the cold valley evaporates.
Spring is like this embroidered path.
Now I hear clear music, stirring even the beautiful clouds.

In spring tree 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.

You just came from my old village
so you know all about village affairs.

When you left, outside my window,
was it in bloom—that winter plum?

Wind buffets and blows autumn rain.
Water cascading thin across rocks,

waves lash at each other. An egret
startles up, white, then settles back.