月下独酌 (Yuè xià dú zhuó)

Among the flowers with wine beneath the sky
Alone I drink — no friend or kin, just me
I raise my cup to toast the moon on high
That's two of us; my shadow makes it three
Alas, the poor moon knows not wine's delight
My shadow follows like a living thing
At last with moon and shadow I unite
In joyful bond, to seize the last of spring
I sing: it sets the moon to rock in time
I dance: my shadow cannot hold its place
Sober, we share companionship sublime;
Drunk at last, we drift apart in space --
Lost to worldly things, until some day
We'll meet again, beyond the Milky Way​

Such love, such loss. This is a translation of Drinking Alone Under the Moon (月下独酌) by Li Bai, arguably the most famous figure in Chinese poetry -- and, perhaps, literature. Active in the Tang period, Li wrote over a thousand poems throughout his storied career, and Drinking Alone Under the Moon is one of the most well-known to this day.

I think this poem masterfully paints a picture of wine that we normally don't see -- one that brims with loneliness, humility, and candor. After scouring several translations of the poem, this above translation was the one I was most satisfied with; inevitably, some elements of the poem are lost in translation, but holistically, the meaning Li intended shines through.

Li also writes that "the poor moon knows not wine's delight," insinuating the wonders of escape and liberation that drinking wine gives the narrator. Wine, here, is clearly delineated from the natural world and order; the moon is inherently a part of nature, while wine is somewhat presented as a human manipulation of and luxury built upon existing nature.

As the poem's narrator drinks fine wine, his shadow appears to form the contours of someone akin to a lost lover in the moonlight.  He or she recounts that when sober, he or she shared "companionship sublime," presumably with a lover, but being "[d]runk at last" endowed the narrator with a sense of liberation and loss to "worldly things." Here, Li strikes a delicate balance between wine's capacity to engender loneliness as well as, paradoxically, hope; the poem ends declaring the lovers will "meet again, beyond the Milky Way."

Growing up, I always wondered if this final line implied that the lovers would meet beyond death. Perhaps the narrator's lover has already passed into a dimension even wine cannot touch. When I was much older, I fell in love with John Milton's work, and read a similar poem, On His Deceased Wife, that reminded me very much of the essence of Drinking Alone Under the Moon. In particular, one of Milton's quotes inspired me to pursue intensive study and work in writing. Milton describes vividly dreaming of his deceased beloved wife and, upon awakening, writes: "I wak’d, she fled, and day brought back my night."