竹里馆竹里館

Alone in a bamboo grove with a zither and the moon — solitude as company, not loneliness.

dú独zuò坐yōu幽huáng篁lǐ里，

tán qín弹琴fù复cháng长xiào啸。

shēn深lín林rén人bù zhī不知，

míng yuè明月lái来xiāng相zhào照。

Line by line

独坐幽篁里，獨坐幽篁裡， Alone I sit in the dark bamboo,
弹琴复长啸。彈琴復長嘯。 playing the zither, whistling long.
深林人不知， Deep in the wood no one knows I am here —
明月来相照。明月來相照。 the bright moon comes to shine on me.

The poet & the story

Another scene from Wang Wei’s Wang River estate. In his later years the poet withdrew into Buddhist practice and the landscape; this quatrain distils that life into one moonlit clearing, and is among the most quoted of all Tang nature poems.

Interpretation

Sitting alone deep in the bamboo, the poet plays his zither and whistles long into the night. No one knows he is there in the deep wood — no one but the bright moon, which comes to keep him company. Being unknown becomes a kind of peace.