to the tune “he xin lang: toasting the bridegroom”

Now that I am old and those who crossed the mountains and oceans

with me are now parts of the mountains and oceans,

I still call those dirty skeletons: my friends.

My friends, now that my white hair is thirty thousand feet long,

taking up so much room around me, nothing in this life

can’t be concluded with a laugh—all those infatuated dreams

of fruitless desire, years in the military, and my ambition

in politics to serve my nation since youth, all these are like the porridge

dumped into a slop bucket. What can make me happy? What

has ever made me happy? Suddenly, I recognize the blue mountains

as dashing and handsome, didn’t know all the while

the blue mountains thought the same about me. After all, we look similar—

the same wrinkly crags and cliffs, mosses and mustaches,

and now, the same stone-heart we share.

With a pot of wine, I scratch my head at the east side window,

wondering if Tao Yuanming felt the same after he finished his poem

about the halted clouds. What do those politicians

drunk at the left bank of the Yangtze understand about the true nature

of drinking—with their feet in sewage, they fish feverish dreams

about fame and money? I turn to holler at the empty landscape,

to startle the clouds and the storm surges.

I don’t feel sorry that I can’t meet those dead

ancient poets. Instead, I feel sorry for them

for not being able to drink with me, a man writ large, unbridled and wild.

Friends, I am understood only by the mountains, your buried bones.

poetry-magazineSelf-Portrait as the Mountain

poetry-magazine贺新郎

Self-Portrait as the Mountain

贺新郎