More Li-Poetry | Ozzie/Whiteglue You dance in the aromatic air here in Sichuan and guide me home then refuse my fermented gift of thanks. In the southeast jungles the bright orange and black tiger becomes faint black and gray bamboo shadow stalking monk food outside the wat. No wine for tiger – just a deep draught of you in the water. Caravans pass to the north skirting the Taklamakan sand sea. Your light transmutes sand to silver, a valueless commodity even to the western barbarians. Last week Tu-Fu and I met in Charkhlik by wine-mediated chance. In that caravan town chance also caused us to meet the giant wren, who stands on the ground and looks down on men, giving squawking pecks to the tops of heads. Or was it the wine? My poems litter the emporor’s courtytard like blue pine needles on the mountain slopes. Twelve hundred years from now, will the Hu read and understand or will meaning be as hard to capture ‘ as the moon in the lake? Ozzy