Cedar Grove (after Wang Wei)
I sit alone among the cedars,
play my guitar and hum.
In this dark forest
no eye spies me but the moon’s.
My take on Wang Wei’s “Bamboo Grove,” from this transliteration copied somewhere along the way:
alone sit dark bamboo among
strum lute again long whistle
deep forest man not know
bright moon come mutual shine
“Cedar Grove” made its first appearance here in March 2014. I adapted it to fit my circumstances…
You might find the Wikipedia entry on Wang Wei of interest.
O at the Edges 
Reblogged this on Prairiepomes and commented:
Golden Elms
in this elm cathedral, my verandah
dappled by autumn wind
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Thanks for reblogging, Anna Marie!
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And your personal touch lends a greater depth to an inner moment of peace.
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Thanks, Ken. The universal is full of the personal.
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Beautiful adaptation.
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Thanks, Jazz. Just trying to bring a little of Texas to Wang Wei. 🙂
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The moon is always a good companion. (K)
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It’s hard to beat!
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It’s a great feeling to be moved into the picture.
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Thanks, Michael. Sometimes we are the picture…
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Lovely. Well done
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Thanks very much, Derrick.
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thank you… for sharing, so peaceful
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I’m so pleased you found it so. Thank you.
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Fine reworking. The looseness of the ‘transliteration’ – what is that, by the way? – seems to facilitate your composition.
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Thanks, Dave. It’s that attempt to find a word-for-word translation between two widely different systems of writing, with separate cultures and all the connotations that come with them. An impossibility, of course.
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Yes but quite stimulating, I’d imagine, for a ‘new’ version – might try and experiment with Google translation …
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If you run a piece back and forth through translation sites, you’ll achieve something that barely resembles the original. It’s fascinating.
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Yeah, by coincidence, just tried that. Could see it curing me of my thwarted dependency on the WordPress Daily Prompt …
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An interesting exercise!
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