Banished Immortal

The Selected Poems of Li Po, translated by David Hinton

The T’ang Dynasty poet, Li Po, is popularly know as the ‘Banished Immortal’, “an exiled spirit moving through this world with an unearthly ease and freedom from attachment,” writes David Hinton, the translator of this extraordinarily fine collection. There is in fact an unmistakable ease, an uncanny, even preternatural satisfaction in the way this poet-wanderer experienced the world around him, every gorge and temple and mountain rendered so crisply, so clearly, it is easy to forget one is reading.

The Chinese term wu-wei (literally: ‘doing nothing’, an important part of Taoist and Ch’an practice) perhaps best describes the selfless spontaneity with which Li Po encounters ‘the ten thousand things”, that is, the material, phenomenal world of form. Writes Hinton, “The most essential quality of Li Po’s work is the way in which wu-wei spontaneity gives shape to his experience of the natural world. He is primarily engaged with the natural world in its wild, rather than domestic forms. Not only does the wild evoke wonder, it is also where the spontaneous energy of tzu-jan (‘being such of itself’ or natural) is clearly visible, energy with which Li Po identified.” 

Here, to illustrate this spirit in his work, are a few of his better known poems:

Listening to Lu Tzu-Hsün 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.

Night Thoughts at Tung-lin Monastery on Lu Mountain

Alone, searching for blue-lotus roofs,

I set out from city gates. Soon, frost

clear, Tung-lin temple bells call out,

Hu Creek’s moon bright in pale water.

Heaven’s fragrance everywhere pure

Emptiness, heaven’s music endless,

I sit silent. It’s still, the entire Buddha-

realm in  a hair’s breadth, mind-depths

all bottomless clarity, in which vast

kalpas begin and end out of nowhere.

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.

An inveterate  drinker, Li Po died as legend says he did—drunk in a boat one night, he drowned while trying to embrace the moon.

Peter Adam Nash