Between 1821 and 1823, Beethoven wrote his last major work for the piano, the Diabelli Variations. He took a simple theme furnished by his publisher, and added 33 variations. A few months ago, in the middle of my life, and perhaps overly sensitive to my mortality, I challenged myself to learn this piece. I set…… Continue reading Writing About The Pengyang Memorial Inscription With Emotion (or ‘Triumph’)
As I was biking along the Shenzhen boardwalk, I looked up. The sky was a cool plastic slate that stretched from the west, where the sun blushed behind pearly screens. Around me the sounds of hip hop mixed with the tinkle of bicycle bells, the scent of jasmine and barbecued meat. Along the shore of…… Continue reading Swallow Terrace Poems
At sunrise, on a day trip to Reno, Shangyin drove past the orange groves that cover southern California. On a whim, he stopped his car and got out. Except for an old man pruning some trees by the roadside, there was no-one in sight. The man’s face was wrinkled and dark, and he had a…… Continue reading 40 Verses Of The Muddy Well
One morning I woke in a sweat. Instinctively, I picked up my smartphone. Banner ads for insurance products and shampoo competed with news feeds about imminent wars and man-made disasters. Everywhere I looked it seemed the world was going up in flames. I wanted to write something about it, but recoiled at the thought of…… Continue reading Given to Official Liu
The Qing dynasty scholar Wang Guowei wrote of poems falling into two categories: close by or remaining at a distance. The Chinese character he uses for distance is ge（隔）, whose ancient pictogram consists of three mounds, and a three legged urn. Shangyin’s poems often evoke a distance between the reader and the word, by referring…… Continue reading Song of the Inner Palace
I once dreamed Li Shangyin[1] was banished from court for speaking his mind. He fell into a deep depression. On a dark day, he went to an oracle and asked the soothsayer to examine the turtle bones and divine his future path. The oracle looked at Shangyin and said: “My son, what is it you…… Continue reading Thirty Rhymes Delivered To Tai Yuanlu and Si Kong
Mister Xie Fang Memorized and Recited My Poems , On a Random Day I Sent Him This Epistle After Shangyin read one of his poems to me, he calmly rested his chin on his hands and said, “We have Beowulf, The Bhagavad-Gita, , the Bayajidda, the Sorrow at Parting of Chu Yuan, but there is…… Continue reading Mr. Xie Fang Memorized and Recited My Poems
Africa is a place of sublime contrasts and savage indifference. To view for the first time a lion hunt and kill, muscles rippling in the sun, to see it pick up the body of an oryx with just its teeth – and all beneath the great blue bowl of a sky that seems to stretch …… Continue reading Spearing the Fish
In the beginning[1], there was no heaven and earth. Instead, a vast silence stretched into the darkness. Out of the great distances, the Creator Pangu was borne on the wings of a beam of light. Had she held a mirror up to her face she would have seen more emptiness, for she was travelling slightly…… Continue reading Roaming
In all the world, there is no sky more beautiful than the African sky. During the day, it is a vast concave bowl flecked with gold and snow, so vast and encompassing one may be forgiven for having a feeling of vertigo. It is even more marvellous at night because all the most interesting things…… Continue reading Uplifting Thoughts on a Spring Night
“When I wrote the Berceuse”, Chopin told me, “ I was dreaming of many things. I had just read a book from the East called the Gita. It is a religious tract that talks about life being an illusion, and how shadows are real, and how we are the reflections of what lies in the…… Continue reading A Poem On The Huizhong Peony Battered By The Rain
Fu[1] To The Moon That Illuminates The Frozen Pond 赋得月照冰池 “Often,” Beethoven leaned back in the armchair of the hotel café, “the urge to write is a drug. My passion justifies me… Even though I often tear up what I have written. ” Shangyin and Beethoven were at the Shangri La Hotel in downtown Shenzhen.…… Continue reading Frozen Pond
A Tang Poet From Nairobi 