The concept of one’s original home, or source, is found in Daoism, Buddhism, and other major spiritual traditions. For a Daoist like Li Ye, it is the Dao itself, the way that cannot be expressed in words, even by a poet of her extraordinary talent, but is everywhere available. Li tells us that her original home can be found in the clouds that drift above Wu Mountain, where she and another of our poets, Xue Tao, find the Daoist goddess of erotic passion and intimate affairs. As noted in our preface, locating the Dao in a woman’s sensuality, as Li and Xue do, is a powerful statement of Tang Daoist understanding that a woman’s passion and physical, sensual nature is an embodiment of the Dao in female form. The fairly explicit sexual and erotic nature found in the rhythms and imagery of this poem are exemplary of the yin principle as Li intimately strums the song of her own woman’s rapture on her “jade harp.” They connect her with the powerful Mysterious Female that exists both in and beyond space and time as extolled in the Dao De Jing. Li expresses what may be considered the unity of the Dao and her own woman’s form in the melody where “cliffs and boulders collapse beneath my fingers” and “crashing waves come alive from the strings of my harp,” just like in the age-old music she hears in her dreams.

My original home is in the clouds over Wu Mountain,

where I often hear the mountain’s flowing spring waters—

a tune that rises out of my jade harp and orbits through space, 

like the age-old music I hear in my dreams.

The Three Gorges that twist and turn for thousands of miles

drift into my secluded chamber in an instant—

cliffs and boulders collapse beneath my fingers,

rushing waterfalls and crashing waves come alive

from the strings of my harp.

Is it a raging wind, holding back thunder,

or the low moan of a river that cannot flow?

Soon, the strength of the roiling current will come to an end

and return to the peaceful trickle of water dripping on flat sand.

I recall the ancient times when Lord Ruan played this song,

and Zhong Rong just couldn’t hear it enough.

After playing this piece one time, I will play it again—

may the music flow on, like a never-ending spring.