Ch'ing P'ing Lyrics

Waking in the gallery
at dawn, and told it's snowing,

I raise the blinds and gaze into pure good fortune.
Courtyard steps a bright mirage of distance,

kitchen smoke trails light through flurried skies,
and the cold hangs jewels among whitened grasses.

Must be heaven's immortals in a drunken frenzy,
grabbing cloud and grinding it into white dust.


Translated by David Hinton



"Ch'ing P'ing Lyrics" by Li Po from The Selected Poems of Li Po, translated by David Hinton. Copyright © 1996 by David Hinton. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.