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Li Bai

selected poems

Waking From Drunkenness on a Spring Day 

Life in the world is but a big dream;
I will not spoil it by any labour or care.
So saying, I was drunk all the day,
Lying helpless at the porch in front of my door.

When I awoke, I blinked at the garden-lawn;
A lonely bird was singing amid the flowers.
I asked myself, had the day been wet or fine?
The Spring wind was telling the mango-bird.

Moved by its song I soon began to sigh,.  
And, as wine was there, I filled my own cup.,  
 Wildly singing I waited for the moon to rise;
When my song was over, all my senses had gone.  
translated by Arthur Waley

 Drinking Alone by Moonlight

A cup of wine, under the flowering trees;
  I drink alone, for no friend is near.
   Raising my cup I beckon the bright moon,
   For he, with my shadow, will make three men.

 The moon, alas, is no drinker of wine;
 Listless, my shadow creeps about at my side.
 Yet with the moon as friend and the shadow as slave
 I must make merry before the Spring is spent.

To the songs I sing the moon flickers her beams;
In the dance I weave my shadow tangles and breaks

While we were sober, three shared the fun;
Now we are drunk, each goes his way.
May we long share our odd, inanimate feast,
And meet at last on the Cloudy River of the sky.

The Long war

They fought last year by the upper valley of Son-Kan, This year by the high ranges of the Leek Mountains,
They are still fighting ... fighting! ...
They wash their swords and armor
in the cold waves of the Tiao-Chih Sea;
Their horses, turning loose over the Tien Mountains,
Seek the meagre grasses in the white snow.

Long, long have they been fighting,
full ten thousand li away from home;
Their armor is worn out,
the soldiers grown old. ...

Oh, the warlike Tartars!
To them manslaughter is their plowing,
Plowing, oh from ancient times,
in the fields of white bones and yellow sands!

It was in vain that the Emperor of Chin
built the Great Wall,
Hoping to shut out those fiery hordes.
Where the wall stands,
down to the Han Dynasty,
The beacon fires are still burning.

The beacon fires keep on burning;
The war will never cease! ...

The soldiers fight and die
in death-grapple on the battlefield,
While their wounded horses howl in lamentation,
Throwing up their heads at the desolate sky;
The gray ravens and hungry vultures tear,
And carry away the long bowels of the dead,
Hanging them on the twigs of lifeless trees...

O soldiers who fight long—
Their blood varnishes the desert weeds!
But the generals who lead them on—
They have accomplished nothing!


Living

The living is a passing traveler;
The dead, a person come home.
One short journey between heaven and earth,
Then, alas! we are the same old dust of ten thousand ages.
The rabbit in the moon pounds out the elixir in vain;
Fu-sang, the tree of immortality, has crumbled to kindling wood.
Man dies, his white bones are dumb without a word
While the green pines feel the coming of spring.
Looking back, I sigh; looking in front of me, I sigh again.
What is there to value in this life's vaporous glory?”