That Place They Call Deer Park Hermitage
On returning to that lonely mountain, you will again find moss
so green and so vibrant you would think it were made by a god.
The moss is provided for by a bit of sun that returns day after day
to penetrate the forest canopy and somehow sustain this shade of green
that at first you recognize, but at second glance is otherworldly.
Not a soul up on that mountain, none besides you to witness this miracle
and yet the faint sound of a human voice endures, all the way up there.
鹿砦
空山不見人
但聞人語響
返景入深林
復照青苔上
Aaron Fai / 費頌倫 is a graduate of the creative writing programs at UCLA, UC Davis, and the University of Oregon, and he serves as associate editor of Grand Journal.
Wang Wei was a Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty, and this poem was the subject of Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei by Eliot Weinberger.
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