西北风吹响，冠蓝鸦的风宣告秋天，春分把蓝色的海湾推到遥远的午后。在峡谷那边的某个地方，李白不见了，他在寻找友谊，或是旧情人的衣袖，或是写信给他的孩子们，给他孩子的孩子，给他孩子的孩子，还有给我们。他的光是什么?灯，月亮，太阳?说它变了，或好或坏，被树叶和雪挡住了;桑蚕丝上有一缕魔光;纯文本上有天才的倾向性;清空思想和心灵，去喝一杯又一杯的酒，说更多的话。他的时代是什么?说它是一种变化，但变化的事物可能是不变的，从菊苣的月亮般的深蓝色沿着紧绷的鳞片到菊苣最温柔的粉红色，在粉红色的领域里，如想象的梦想和思想。 But of the heart beneath the winecup moon the tears that fell beneath the winecup moon for children lost, lost lovers, and lost friends, what can we say but that it never ends? Even for us it never ends, only begins. Yet to spell down the poem on her page, margining her phrases, parsing forth the sevenfold prism of meaning, up the scale from chicory pink to blue, is to assume Li Po himself: as he before assumed the poets and the sages who were his. Like him, we too have eaten of the word: with him are somewhere lost beyond the Gorge: and write, in rain, a letter to lost children, a letter long as time and brief as love. II And yet not love, not only love. Not caritas or only that. Nor the pink chicory love, deep as it may be, even to moon-dark blue, in which the dragon of his meaning flew for friends or children lost, or even for the beloved horse, for Li Po's horse: not these, in the self's circle so embraced: too near, too dear, for pure assessment: no, a letter crammed and creviced, crannied full, storied and stored as the ripe honeycomb with other faith than this. As of sole pride and holy loneliness, the intrinsic face worn by the always changing shape between end and beginning, birth and death. How moves that line of daring on the map? Where was it yesterday, or where this morning when thunder struck at seven, and in the bay the meteor made its dive, and shed its wings, and with them one more Icarus? Where struck that lightning-stroke which in your sleep you saw wrinkling across the eyelid? Somewhere else? But somewhere else is always here and now. Each moment crawls that lightning on your eyelid: each moment you must die. It was a tree that this time died for you: it was a rock and with it all its local web of love: a chimney, spilling down historic bricks: perhaps a skyful of Ben Franklin's kites. And with them, us. For we must hear and bear the news from everywhere: the hourly news, infinitesimal or vast, from everywhere. III Sole pride and loneliness: it is the state the kingdom rather of all things: we hear news of the heart in weather of the Bear, slide down the rungs of Cassiopeia's Chair, still on the nursery floor, the Milky Way; and, if we question one, must question all. What is this `man'? How far from him is `me'? Who, in this conch-shell, locked the sound of sea? We are the tree, yet sit beneath the tree, among the leaves we are the hidden bird, we are the singer and are what is heard. What is this `world'? Not Li Po's Gorge alone, and yet, this too might be. `The wind was high north of the White King City, by the fields of whistling barley under cuckoo sky,' where, as the silkworm drew her silk, Li Po spun out his thoughts of us. `Endless as silk' (he said) `these poems for lost loves, and us,' and, `for the peachtree, blooming in the ditch.' Here is the divine loneliness in which we greet, only to doubt, a voice, a word, the smoke of a sweetfern after frost, a face touched, and loved, but still unknown, and then a body, still mysterious in embrace. Taste lost as touch is lost, only to leave dust on the doorsill or an ink-stained sleeve: and yet, for the inadmissible, to grieve. Of leaf and love, at last, only to doubt: from world within or world without, kept out. IV Caucus of robins on an alien shore as of the Ho-Ho birds at Jewel Gate southward bound and who knows where and never late or lost in a roar at sea. Rovers of chaos each one the `Rover of Chao,' whose slight bones shall put to shame the swords. We fly with these, have always flown, and they stay with us here, stand still and stay, while, exiled in the Land of Pa, Li Po still at the Wine Spring stoops to drink the moon. And northward now, for fall gives way to spring, from Sandy Hook and Kitty Hawk they wing, and he remembers, with the pipes and flutes, drunk with joy, bewildered by the chance that brought a