Sunday, August 31, 2008
A Chinese drinking poem
Mountain Drinking Song
To drown the ancient sorrows,
we drank a hundred jugs of wine
there in the beauty of the night.
We couldn't go to bed with the moon so bright.
Then finally the wine overcame us
and we lay down on the empty mountainside -
the earth for a pillow,
and a blanket made of heaven.
Li Bai (701-762)
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2 comments:
This is a find.
When I was little I would tell adults that the sky was a cloak with stars sewn on it and that the sun and moon were the heads of two people that slept beneith it. Drinking didnt come into the picture then as I was quite little but I think Li Bai and I were on a simialr vein.
"a blanket made of heaven", sounds dreamy.
Yes, Li Bai (also called Li Po) is the man: one of the best of the classical Chinese poets, and one of the best poets of drinking of any nationality.
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