The Post-Classical Poetry Of
The Post-Classical Poetry of
Li Po’s Like Water or Clouds
(699-762 AD)
Green Mountain
You ask me why I live on Green Mountain –
I smile in silence and the quiet mind.
Peach petals blow on mountain streams
To earths and skies beyond Humankind.
Wine
Drinking, I sit,
Lost to Night,
Keep falling petals
From the ground:
Get up to follow
The stream’s white moon,
No sign of birds,
The humans gone.
Lines For A Taoist Adept
My friend lives high on East Mountain.
His nature is to love the hills and gorges.
In green spring he sleeps in empty woodland,
Still there when the noon sun brightens.
Pine-tree winds to dust his hair.
Rock-filled streams to cleanse his senses.
Free of all sound and stress,
Resting on a wedge of cloud and mist.
MêngHao-jan
True-Taoist, good friend Mêng,
Your madness known to one and all,
Young you laughed at rank and power.
Now you sleep in pine-tree clouds.
On moonlit nights floored by the Dragon.
In magic blossom deaf to the World.
You rise above - a hill so high.
I drink the fragrance from afar.
***Note: MêngHao-jan (689-740AD) lived in the mountains where he studied the Classics and wrote poetry. He tried for the Civil Service but failed the examination. He was a friend of Wang Wei and Li Po. He was careless of worldly achievement and often arrived too drunk to work. The Dragon here is used to mean drink and Imperial disdain, while the blossom is the fragrance of the Tao.
Old Poem
Did Chuang Chou dream he was the butterfly?
Or the butterfly dream he was Chuang Chou?
In the single body’s transformations
See the vortex of the Myriad Creatures.
No mystery then that the Magic Seas
Shrank again to crystal streams,
Or down by Ch’ang-an’s Green Gate
The gardener was Marquis of Tung-Ling.
If this is the fate of fame and power,
What is it for- this endless striving?
Note: The Myriad Creatures are the manifestations of the Tao, as distinct from the Tao itself. The Mythical Islands of the Immortals in the East were located in the Magic Seas, which in a legend were said to be dwindling to nothing. When the Han Dynasty overthrew the Ch’in, The Marquis of Tung-Ling was reduced to growing melons by the Green Gate, one of the eastern gates of the capital, Ch’ang-an.
Three Poems on Wine
I
Among the flowers a drink of wine.
I sit alone without a friend.
So I invite the moon,
Then see my shadow, make us three.
The moon can’t know how to drink,
Since just my shadow drinks with me.
The moon brought shadow along
To keep me silent company.
Joy should reflect the season.
I sing. That makes the Moon reel.
Get up. Make my shadow sway.
While I’m here let’s celebrate.
When I’m drunk each seek the Way,
Tie ourselves to Eternal Journeys,
Swear to meet again in the Milky Way.
II
If the heavens were not in love with wine,
There’d be no Wine Star in the sky.
And if earth wasn’t always drinking,
There’d be nowhere called Wine Spring.
I’ve heard that pure wine makes the Sage.
Even the cloudy makes us wise.
If even the wise get there through drink,
What’s the point of True Religions?
Three times and I understand the Way,
Six and I’m one again with Nature.
Only the things we know when we’re drunk
Can never be expressed when we’re sober.
III
Third month in Ch’ang-an city,
Knee-deep in a thousand fallen flowers.
Alone in Spring who can stand this sadness?
Or sober see transient things like these?
Long life or short, rich or poor,
Our destiny’s determined by the world.
But drinking makes us one with life and death,
The Myriad Things we can barely fathom.
Drunk, Heaven and Earth are gone.
Stilled, I clutch my lonely pillow.
Forgetting that the Self exists,
That is the mind’s greatest joy.