Li Po

A wandering wino and political gadfly, and one of the greatest poets to ever live, Li Po (701-762) deserves his own road movie. There is nothing to dislike about the wisdom in his poems. Their lines are as clear as the mountain streams he slept beside in his travels.

His Taoism, the quest for unrestrained beauty, concerned life's simplest formulations extracted from nature.

He found importance in humor and friendship and spoke to a worldliness that propelled him into fits of drunken wonderment.
His humorous grace and simplicity reminds us what poetry offers at its best.

When I found Li Po I found a sense of my own cosmology, a philophysical world that teeters between despair and exhileration, but which makes everything except soccer and the sound of a tuba in a marching band interesting.

Here are two by Li Po--

Drinking Alone with the Moon

From a pot of wine among the flowers
I drank alone.There was no one with me --
Till raising my cup, I ask the bright moon
To bring me my shadow and make us three.
Alas, the moon was unable to drink
And my shadow tagged me vacantly;
But still for a while I had these friends
To cheer me through the end of spring....
I sang. The moon encouraged me
I danced. My shadow tumbled after.
As long as I knew, we were born companions.
And then I was drunk, and we lost one another.
....Shall goodwill ever be secure?
I watch the long road of the River of Stars.

*

A Farewell to Secretary Shu-yun
at the Hsieh Tiao Villa in Hsuan-Chou

Since yesterday had thrown me and bolt,
Today has hurt my heart even more.
The autumn wildgeese have a long wing for escort
As I face them from this villa, drinking my wine.
The bones of great writers are your brushes, in the school of heaven,
And I am Lesser Hsieh growing up by your side.
We both are exalted to distant thought,
Aspiring to the sky and the bright moon.
But since water still flows, though we cut it with our swords,
And sorrow return,though we drown them with wine,
Since the world can in no way answer our craving,
I will loosen my hair tomorrow and take to a fishing-boat.


TS