When the countless admirers and readers of Li Po
look at the moonlight—do they see the self-same frost?
Refers to Li Po’s Thoughts on a Quiet Night
Only a small numinous breed of poets
carries in them that stillness of the night
that allows them to hear a soul’s whisper
nearby—by casting a gaze on far-off stars,
in a way similar to Li Po, one of the two
China’s greatest masters in this seer’s art
and one born where now is Kyrgyzstan.
But how else to hear and how else to tap
into that otherwise always present and
close and ever-uninterrupted occurrence,
welling into unobstructed Heaven’s paths
when all else is asleep or numb and down?
And in that vein Li Po left his little note:
lunar light is frost which to embrace is to die.
