The Poetry of Li Bai

During my trip to China to participate in the IAU Colloquium 182, I learned about the poetry of Li Bai. He was an 8^th century poet who wrote a number of poems in which the Moon is featured. One of the conference organizers thought that the following poem was particularly appropriate to the topic of the colloqium, namely, seeing things not as they are but after their light has been distorted by passing through a medium (which can be similar to the distortions arising from reflections).

Inquiring of the moon, winecup in hand

Li Bai

When did the moon first come to be?
Just now I've set my wine aside to ask.
Unreached by anyone, accompanying everyone,
A flying mirror brightness over crimson palace gates,
Her purest light shines forth
When azure mists have been dispersed.
How is it that what disappears in clouds at dawn
Is seen arising over the sea at dusk?
Why does the Rabbit grind elixir ceaselessly?
Who keeps the lonely Chang E company?
People today see not the moon the ancients saw
And yet this moon shown once upon the ancients.
Ancients, moderns are like the flowing waters:
All see the bright moon as it is.
My only wish is that when wine and song are near
Moonlight will forever linger on this goblet fair.

Note: The Rabbit, Chang E: Mythological denizens of the Moon. Chinese children still trace the form of a rabbit pounding elixir with mortar and pestle on the moon; Chang E fled there after stealing some of the elixir of immortality given her husband Hou Yi by the Queen Mother of the West. Hou Yi built a palace on the sun, and the two meet on the 15^th day of the 8^th month, during the Mid-Autumn Festival. (That's the 15^th day of the 8^th month of the Chinese year, i.e., when the Moon is full in about September, when they eat special "moon cakes.")