Newly Planted Bamboo

Newly Planted Bamboo

by Wei Zhuang

In loneliness I watch this gentleman' before my house here.

I compose a poem and chant it strolling by the balustrade in tears there.

Wandering far from home, I have no friends,

Yet the bamboo grove treats me like a host.

“This gentleman” may refer to an anecdote about the 4th-century scholar Wang Huizhi who had a particular love for bamboo, and once ordered that bamboo be planted around a house he rented. When asked why he bothered, as the house was not his, he pointed at the bamboo and replied, “I can't live a single day without this gentleman for company."