Hills empty, no one to be seen
We hear only voices echoed —
With light coming back into the deep wood
The top of the green moss is lit again.
— G. W. ROBINSON, 1973
(Robinson, Poems of Wang Wei)
Robinson’s translation, published by Penguin Books, is, unhappily, the most widely available edition of Wang in English.
In this poem Robinson not only creates a narrator, he makes it a group, as though it were a family outing. With that one word, we, he effectively scuttles the mood of the poem.
Reading the last word of the poem as top, he offers an image that makes little sense on the forest floor: one would have to be small indeed to think of moss vertically.
For a jolt to the system, try reading this aloud.