It’s National Poetry Month. To celebrate, we’re doing a little series we’re calling Wine is Poetry. We’ll be celebrating what poetry has to say about wine and the enjoyment of it and how the enjoyment of wine has a great deal to do with the enjoyment of poetry and vice-versa. It’s all intermingled in our minds like vines reaching up a trellis toward the Sun!
To begin, “Drinking Alone” by Li Po. Li Po was a poet famed in his own day from 8th Century Szechuan, China. Legend says he would drink a bottle of saké and write 100 poems. He is the wondering poet after which Rihaku’s excellent saké, Rihaku Wandering Poet, is named.
Drinking alone
with the moon
An arbour of flowers and a kettle of wine:
Alas! in the bowers no companion is mine.
Then the moon sheds her rays on my goblet and me,
And my shadow betrays we’re a party of three!
Though the moon cannot swallow her share of the grog
And my shadow must follow wherever I jog,
Yet their friendship I’ll borrow and gaily carouse,
And laugh away sorrow while springtime allows.
See the moon – how she glances response to my song;
See my shadow – it dances so lightly along!
While sober I feel, you are both my good friends;
When drunken I reel, our companionship ends.
But we’ll soon have a greeting without a goodbye,
At our next merry meeting away in the sky.
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