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.
–TONY BARNSTONE, WILLIS BARNSTONE & XU HAIXIN, 1991
(Wang Wei, Laughing Lost in the Mountains)
Perhaps inspired by Kenneth Rexroth (#11), the three translators add far off. Undoubtedly inspired by Rexroth, their sun also slips into the forest. Snyder (#19) had imagined the moss that grows up the bark of a tree. Here it is apparently a kind of Spanish moss, which is not a moss and is a New World plant that didn’t exist in China.