contemplativeinquiry

At dusk I came down from the mountain,

The mountain moon as my companion,

And looked behind at tracks I’d taken

That were blue, blue beyond the skyline;

You took my arm, lead me to your hut

Where small children drew hawthorn curtains

To green bamboos and a hidden path

With vines to brush the travellers’ clothes;

And I rejoiced at a place to rest

And good wine, too, to pour out with you:

Ballads we sang, the wind in the pines,

Till our songs done, Milky Way had paled;

And I was drunk and you were merry,

We had gaily forgotten the world!

Li Po and Tu Fu Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973 (Poems selected and translated with an introduction and notes by Arthur Cooper)

 The poem above was written by Li Po (701-762) and its full title is ‘Coming down from Chung-Nan Mountain by Hu-Szu’s Hermitage, he gave me rest for the night and set out the wine’. The editor says: “this is typical of Li Po’s occasional poems, a ‘bread-and-butter letter’ to a friend who had entertained him. The ‘hermitage’ is not to be taken too seriously and need mean no more than a country cottage. In a world of intriguing courtiers, everyone was pleased to be called a retired hermit; though the word used for ‘hermit’ here is in fact also a high Taoist Degree of Initiation. (‘The world’ at the end of the poem, though a fair translation of the word used, translates something that can itself mean ‘intrigue’.)