From David Hintons’ translation of Li Po – The Selected Poems of Li Po:

It’s April in Ch’ang-an, these thousand
blossoms making a brocade of daylight.

Who can bear spring’s lonely sorrows, who face it without wine? It’s the only way.

Success or failure, life long or short:
our fate’s given by Changemaker at birth.

But a single cup evens out life and death, our ten thousand concerns unfathomed,

and once I’m drunk, all heaven and earth vanish, leaving me suddenly alone in bed,

forgetting that person I am even exists.
Of all our joys, this must be the deepest.

From David Hinton’s translation of Li Po – The Selected Poems of Li Po

Something said, waking drunk on a spring day

It’s like boundless dream here in this
world, nothing anywhere to trouble us.

I have, therefore, been drunk all day,
a shambles of sleep on the front porch.

Coming to, I look into the courtyard.
There’s a bird among blossoms calling,

and when I ask what season this is,
an oriole’s voice drifts on spring winds.

Overcome, verging on sorrow and lament,
I pour another drink. Soon, awaiting

this bright moon, I’m chanting a song.
And now it’s over, I’ve forgotten why.

From David Hinton’s translation of Li Po – The Selected Poems of Li Po

Drinking alone beneath the moon

Among the blossoms, a single jar of wine.
No one else here, I ladle it out myself.

Raising my cup, I toast the bright moon,
and facing my shadow makes friends three,

though moon has never understood wine,
and shadow only trails along behind me.

Kindred a moment with moon and shadow,
I’ve found a joy that must infuse spring:

I sing, and moon rocks back and forth;
I dance, and shadow tumbles into pieces.

Sober, we’re together and happy.  Drunk,
we scatter away into our own directions:

intimates forever, we’ll wander carefree
and meet again in Star River distances

From David Hinton’s translation of Li Po – The Selected Poems of Li Po

Mountain Dialogue

You ask why I’ve settled in these emerald mountains,
and so I smile, mind at ease of itself, and say nothing.

Peach blossoms drift streamwater away deep in mystery:
it’s another heaven and earth, nowhere among people.

From David Hinton’s translation of Li Po – The Selected Poems of Li Po

Listening to Lu Tzu-Hsun play the ch’in on a moonlit night

The night’s lazy, the moon bright. Sitting
here, a recluse plays his pale white ch’in,

and suddenly, as if cold pines were singing,
it’s all those harmonies of grieving wind.

Intricate fingers flurries of white snow,
empty thoughts emerald-water clarities:

No one understands now. Those who could
hear a song this deeply vanished long ago.

From David Hinton’s translation of Li Po – The Selected Poems of Li Po

Written on a wall at Hsiu-Ching Monastery in Wu-Ch’ang

Now a monastery on southern river-banks,
this was once my northern kinsman’s home.

There’s no one like him now.  Courtyards
empty, monks sit deep in temple silence.

His books remain, bound in ribbon-grass,
and white dust blankets his ch’in stand.

He lived simply, planting peach and plumb,
but in nirvana, springtime never arrives.

A poem of Li Po – pg. 115 in the Penguin Classics edition of Li Po and Tu Fu, translated by Arthur Cooper.  Cooper’s introduction and commentaries, incidentally, are some of the best I’ve ever read.

IN THE MOUNTAINS:
A REPLY TO THE VULGAR

They ask me where’s the sense
on jasper mountains?
I laugh and don’t reply,
in heart’s own quiet:

Peach petals float their streams
away in secret
To other skies and earths
than those of mortals