Chinese Literature - Poems of Li Po

Li Po (699-762AD)

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.

Mêng Hao-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.

Ho Chih-chang

When we met the first time at Ch’ang-an

He called me the ‘Lost Immortal’.

Then he loved the Way of Forgetting.

Now under the pine-trees he is dust.

His golden keepsake bought us wine.

Remembering, the tears run down my cheeks.