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This was number fifteen in a series of seventeen poems Li Pai wrote in 754, while visiting the town of Kueichih in Anhui province. Kueichih still serves as a minor port for Yangtze River traffic, but it is better known nowadays as the gateway for pilgrims visiting the Buddhist mountain of Chiuhuashan. In Li Pai’s day, Chiuhuashan (Nine Flower Mountain) was just another mountain—its name comes from one of his poems—and he preferred to wander along the Chiupu River southwest of town. This poem is often cited as an example of Li Pai’s romantic style. But our version of reality is forever at the mercy of our emotions, and this is about as realistic a poem as Li Pai could have written at this stage of his life. When he later died downriver from Kueichih, the story that circulated was that he drowned while trying to embrace the moon and that, while his body was buried nearby, his spirit flew up to Heaven on the back of a whale. Or maybe it wasn’t a whale: between Kueichih and the place where he reportedly drowned is a nature sanctuary for the sightless Yangtze dolphin. Chinese mirrors were made of convex palm-sized pieces of polished metal that were held in the hand and covered up when not in use.

Chiupu River Song

LI PAI

My white hair extends three miles

the sorrow of parting made it this long

looking in a mirror who would guess

where autumn frost comes from