22. Passing the Night at Wang Changling's Retreat | Chang Jian

全诗没有一个人出场。第二联的月光「犹为君」照，第三联的花影在茅亭里「宿」、苔痕在药院里「滋」，都是把没有人的地方写成有人过的样子。「宿」和「滋」两个字本来用在活物和日子上，常建把它们安给影子和苔藓，等于说主人留下的痕迹还在自己往前走。这比直接写荒废高明，也比直接写怀念克制。

No person appears in this poem. In the second couplet the moonlight still falls "for you"; in the third, flower shadows lodge in the pavilion and moss spreads in the herb yard, all of it writing a place no one is in as somewhere someone lives. The two verbs belong properly to living things and to days passing, and Chang Jian gives them to shadows and moss, which says the marks the owner left go on moving by themselves. That is subtler than writing abandonment, and more restrained than writing fondness directly.

「清光犹为君」的「君」是王昌龄。这个字一出来，前面「唯孤云」的空就有了对象：空不是无人，是人不在。月光照的本来是这一片地方，常建说它「为你」照着，等于替主人把这份所有权保住了。写一行简单的景，藏进去一个不在场的人，这是这首诗里最省力也最结实的一句。

The "you" of "still for you" is Wang Changling. Once the pronoun appears, the emptiness of "only a lone cloud" gains an object: it is not that nobody is there, but that he is not. The light falls on the place in any case; calling it light "for you" keeps the owner's claim on it intact. A plain line of scenery with an absent man folded inside is the lightest and also the firmest line in the poem.

末联只用了一个「亦」。前面三联写主人留下的空屋、月光、苔痕，写到这里诗人忽然把自己接上去：他先辞世，我也去。常建没有写羡慕，也没有写自己处境不好，一句「谢时去」就把话说完了。末句落到西山，鸾鹤是仙人的坐骑，去处具体到一座山，这个决定就不是叹气，而是有个地址的。

The last couplet uses one word: "too". Three couplets have shown the empty hut, the light and the moss the owner left behind, and here the poet attaches himself: he took leave of the world first, I go as well. Chang Jian writes neither envy nor complaint about his own position; a phrase about leaving the times is the whole statement. The last line lands on the western hills, and the luan birds and cranes belong to immortals, so the destination is a real mountain. The decision is not a sigh; it has an address.