Darkening Hills
after Wang Wei
Twilightin late autumn:
a film of smirrover empty hills
Moonlightpeers through firs,
a cool streamtrembles over stones
Birches whisperas the girls come home
rowans partas others leave
The scents of springnever last long
but you, my friend,you stay with me. Just stay.
山居秋暝
空山新雨後, 天氣晚來秋。
明月松間照, 清泉石上流。
竹喧歸浣女, 蓮動下漁舟。
隨意春芳歇, 王孫自可留。
The path up the hill
after Wang Wei
A gnarly stream where stones gleam white.
Thin skies. Red leaves in the wind.
No rain falls on the path up the hill
but I’m soaked to the skin with the blue.
王维
荆溪白石出,天寒红叶稀。
山路元无雨,空翠湿人衣。
White hairs
after Wang Wei
Once a bairn, in now a dawdling old man;
white hairsin where there used to be down.
Doesn’t the heartin get right hurt by life!
Someplace, in or thereabouts, a gate,
and beyondin all this yearning ends.
须臾白髪变垂髫。
Garry MacKenzie has won poetry awards including the Wigtown Poetry Competition and a Scottish Book Trust New Writer’s Award. He has a PhD in contemporary landscape poetry, and his non-fiction book Scotland: A Literary Guide for Travellers was published by I.B. Tauris in 2016.