August 13, 2012
I dreamt last night of singing with Li Po.
(Or is he now sleeping, dreaming of me?)
How much we drank… The world all vertigo…
He brought his ch’in. It was life’s apogee.
Yet thinking back, if he dreamt me before
I went to sleep, what would he think? How strange
The beer, steel stools, Beatles’ song, pub décor,
How far from his wooded Eastern Mountain Range!
On a distant tree, a white-crowned sparrow sings.
Can you too hear it? Or are you still absent?
It’s been too long since your last visiting,
And my time out West has largely been misspent.
Tonight, you won’t see Venus; the moon occludes
—O my love, who can bear such starry interludes?
Andrew Szilvasy teaches literature outside Boston, and lives in the city with his wife and two cats.
This is a very interesting poem indeed. I do believe the final couplet succeeds.
Wonderful poem – love the control of the Western sonnet form with the Eastern imagistic philosophy: very powerful.