POET LI PO PASSING THROUGH HUISHAN By Hong Zhu

POET LI PO PASSING THROUGH HUISHAN*

By Hong Zhu 

A lotus flower looks back, it sees a dragonfly.

A butterfly looks back, it sees Liangzhu*.

A Tang poem does the same, it sees poet Li Po,

who once looked over his shoulder, too.

Could he have seen me? I am one of Li Po’s other poems.

When a dream turns around, it’s time to wake up.

When a river turns around, time returns to the past.

When a road turns around and around,

it becomes a winding mountain road.

Can a mountain also turn around? How much effort would it take?

“Hui” means to go back, the same in Huishan and in Huijia

—to go back to the mountain or to go home.

If a mountain wants to go home, it will turn around.

But why am I here, in a town with a name like "Go-Back Mountain?"

All I want is to have a drink where Li Po once looked back.

There is a universe in the glass as well as time bygone.

The vintage wine that Li Po got drunk on, let me see, what’s its name?

Is this a rhetorical question? Everyone knows it’s called Homesickness.

Notes:

1 Huishan (literally translated into Go-Back Mountain) is in Zhejiang province

2 Liangzhu: The Butterfly lovers, tragic love story of a pair of lovers Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai. One possible rendering of the second line: "Liang Shanbo looked back and saw his Zhu Yingtai." "A butterfly looked back and saw another butterfly..."

About the poet:

Hong Zhu, whose original name is Wang Jun, was born in Nanjing in 1967. He currently serves as the director of the Editing Office at China Federation of Literary and Art Circles Publishing House in Beijing. He is a member of the China Writers Association.

He has won numerous awards, including the Bing Xin Prose Award from the China Prose Society, the Xu Zhimo Poetry Award from the Chinese Poetry Society, the Prose Award of the Lao She Literature Award, the Luyao Youth Literature Award, the First Prize of the CCTV TV Poetry and Prose Competition, the 2008 China Prose Annual Gold Award, the 2013 "Overseas Poetry Journal" Annual Poet Award, the Literature Award of Mengya, as well as awards from China Youth, Poetry Periodical and Stars. In 2012, he was selected into the "100 Blogs Influencing China" during the ten-year development of blogs.