LI PO (China, 701 - 762)

THREE POEMS ON WINE

I

Amidst the flowers a jug of wine,
I pour alone lacking companionship.
So raising the cup I invite the Moon,
Then turn to my shadow which makes three of us.
Because the Moon does not know how to drink,
My shadow merely follows the movement of my body.
The moon has brought the shadow to keep me company a while,
The practice of mirth should keep pace with spring.
I start a song and the moon begins to reel,
I rise and dance and the shadow moves grotesquely.
While I'm still conscious let's rejoice with one another,
After I'm drunk let each one go his way.
Let us bind ourselves for ever for passionless journeyings.
Let us swear to meet again far 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.