some swear guardians
come to life -- dancing through
the temple yard...
but only Autumn nights, and
after a calabash of wine.
Guardian [Kyōka]
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Tag Archives: wine
Calabash Time [Kyōka]
bowl in the right
calabash in the left:
drunkard empties
& then fills his cup --
amid missing time.
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GEORGIA LIMERICK
There was a famed Georgian vintner
who thought about wines all winter –
as he thought, he drank,
and -- let us be frank –
he became less vintner than drinker.
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Dragon Rider Limerick
There once was a rider of dragons
Who drank alcohol by the flagon,
But dragons are mythic,
So, there was an uptick
In rides when he fell off the wagon.
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Wine Dance [Senryū]
the poet's wild dance
spills not a drop of wine,
but for down the throat.
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The Vine [Free Verse]
Grape leaves flutter
and some catch the light
to glow with translucence.
I'm in an ancient place,
and this is such an ancient
endeavor.
Wine has been the king
of pursuits in these parts
for millennia.
Is that why I can become
lost in the play of light
on quivering leaves?
Or is it just that time of day?
The sun is low -- ready to set --
My mind is slow & ready to drink.
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“West River Moon” by Su Shi [w/ Audio]
Wavelet on wavelet glimmers by the shore;
Cloud on cloud dimly appears in the sky.
Unsaddled is my white-jadelike horse;
Drunk, asleep in the sweet grass I'll lie.
My horse's hoofs may break, I'm afraid,
The breeze-rippled brook paved by moonlit jade.
I tether my horse to a bough of green willow.
Near the bridge where I pillow
My head on arms and sleep till the cuckoo's song awakes
A spring daybreak.
Translation: Xu Yuanchong [translator]. 2021. Deep, Deep the Courtyard. [庭院深深.] Cite Publishing: Kuala Lumpur, p. 238
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Be Drunken by Charles Baudelaire [w/ Audio]
Be always drunken. Nothing else matters: that is the only question. If you would not feel the horrible burden of Time weighing on your shoulders and crushing you to the earth, be drunken continually.
Drunken with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you will. But be drunken.
And if sometimes, on the stairs of a palace, or on the green side of a ditch, or in the dreary solitude of your own room, you should awaken and the drunkenness be half or wholly slipped away from you, ask of the wind, or of the wave, or of the star, or of the bird, or of the clock, or whatever flies, or sighs, or rocks, or sings, or speaks, ask what hour it is; and the wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: “It is the hour to be drunken! Be drunken, if you would not be martyred slaves of Time, be drunken continually! With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you will.”
NOTE: This is the Arthur Symons translation from the 1913 Elkin Mathews edition of Baudelaire’s Poems in Prose. Available via Project Gutenberg at: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/50489/pg50489-images.html#XI
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Drinking Alone by Moonlight by Li Bai [w/ Audio]
A pot of wine, under blossoms. I drink alone, no friends in sight. I raise a cup to lustrous Moon: Me, Moon, and Shadow will make three. But Moon is a teetotaler. And Shadow just skulks at my feet. Still, Moon & Shadow are my chums. We need a bash before Spring's end. But my singing makes Moon recoil. And Shadow flops hard when I dance. At first, we have a grand old time, But we part ways when I drift off. We should keep this epic friendship rolling, and meet again in the River of Stars.
NOTE: I produced this “translation” / arrangement, using translations by Arthur Waley, Ezra Pound, and that of “The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry” [ed. by Tony Barnstone and Chou Ping] to get varied takes on the source poem.
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Li Bai [Lyric Poem]
Li Bai fills his cup; Li Bai loves his wine; Li Bai sits in moonlight, staring at the sky.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 