Perhaps it is true that he gave

Each poem to the water he loved,

Setting each gently on the light

Shimmering and floating away

To where he could not yet go,

The darkness he had no words for.  

     I hoard the sky a setting sun leaves

     and love this cold stream's clarity;

     western light follows water away,

     rippled current a wanderer's heart.

     I sing, watch cloud and moon, empty

     song soon long wind through pine.

He never wrote of his death, though

Each day and each poem was a part

Of his life and his love slipping away,

As I send mine on this water flowing

West to Ch'ing-Ling stream, a song

Returning across thirteen-hundred years.

(The quoted stanza is Li Po's poem "Wandering Ch'ing-Ling

Stream in Nan-Yang.")