The Sweet Lie about Li Bai(701-762)

Once again I am reading how Li Bai

supposedly drowned while trying to embrace the Moon

reflected on the surface of a river.

This time, the writer tells how it comforts her,

that death she sees as pleasant concerning alternative

fates imagined up by Du Fu, his friend.

And I think how often I have read this,

this sweet lie, and when first I learned

- it was decades ago, surely -

about the letter Li Bai's cousin wrote of the poet's death;

that how after a long and painful illness

the poet expired at the cousin's home, in bed.

An ordinary death, the Moon hovering cold and distant;

no more poetic than dying

lungs full of water.

11.01.2017