Guest Poet: Li Bai

Li Bai manuscript









I've been reading a little book called 'Five Lectures on
Chinese Poetry' by Lui Zhiwei (1935) so I thought you may like a couple of little poems by Li Bai, aka Li Po in the West.

They are jue ju style and these are in 7 syllable lines (they can also be in 5, but Li Bai favoured 7):

In the Mountain, Drinking with a Man of Leisure

While we two drink, the mountain flowers have opened -
one cup, one cup, yet another cup.
Now I am drunk and drowsy, so you had better go.
Come tomorrow, if you wish, and bring the harp.


An Answer to a Worldly One from the Mountain

Ask me why I live among the green mountains?
I laugh but answer not, for my heart is free.
The peach blossoms and running water have quietly gone,
In another heaven and earth, not the world of men.


And lastly, one to his wife when he was going to exile (he was
forgiven before he actually got there, so he used a lot of poetic
lisence in this one >g<):

To my Wife, from Ye Lang, the Land of Exile

Divided from you, I lament in Ye Lang beyond the skies.
In my moonlit house a message seldom arrives.
I watch the wild geese all returning northward in the spring.
And they come south, but not a word from Yuzhang.