
Before my bed
there is bright moonlight
So that it seems
like frost on the ground:
Lifting my head
I watch the bright moon,
Lowering my head
I dream that I’m home.
This must be the best known of all Chinese poems, especially among Chinese overseas. (The reader will probably succeed in getting a friendly Chinese waiter to say it, in his own dialect). The version here translates the one everybody knows, though the accepted version in Li Po’s works differs slightly. I don’t think the difference (if this is indeed not exactly how he wrote it) would worry him: “time paints” perhaps also in poetry.