Drinking Alone Beneath the Moon : On Being Noticed
In the quiet lines of Drinking Alone Beneath the Moon, the eighth-century Chinese poet Li Bai gives voice to a loneliness that does not shout. Instead, it dulls its sorrow with wine:
Among the blossoms, a jar of wine—
I drink alone, with none beside.
I lift my cup and invite the bright moon;
facing my shadow—now three of us.
Surrounded by blossoms, wine before him, he is still alone. To ease the ache, he invites the moon and his shadow to keep him company. Even then, the companionship is fragile. When the wine fades, each goes its own way.
Drinking Alone Beneath the Moon is a short lyrical poem about the search for companionship beyond ordinary human society.
In the poem, Li Bai drinks wine alone at night, finding no human friends around him. He imaginatively invites the bright moon and his own shadow to join him, forming a symbolic trio. As he drinks and sings, the moon seems to follow him and his shadow dances beside him, creating a momentary sense of joy and freedom.
Beneath this playful surface, the poem reflects a deeper theme: human isolation and the transient nature of happiness. The moon and shadow cannot truly share his feelings, and the companionship fades as the night ends. Li Bai contrasts fleeting earthly pleasure with a longing for a more enduring, almost spiritual connection, suggesting that true harmony may lie beyond the physical world.
It is a gentle, aching picture of what many discover with age: the world grows louder, faster, less attentive, even dispassionate, while the soul grows quieter and more aware of absence and many seek solace in alcohol.
Loneliness is not new. It is not a failure of faith. It is part of the long human story.
The psalmist knew this ache well. In Psalm 71, he prays with disarming honesty, transforming loneliness into communion with God:
Do not cast me off in the time of old age;
forsake me not when my strength is spent.
This is not a prayer of bitterness, but of trust. The psalmist does not deny weakness; he brings it before God. While society may overlook the aging, God is addressed directly; because God still sees.
Li Bai looks to the moon because in his eyes no one else is there.
The psalmist looks to God because He always is.
There is deep comfort here. Human companionship may thin with time—friends pass on, voices fade, roles diminish, but divine companionship does not depend on usefulness, youth, or relevance. God does not drift away when strength scatters, as the shadow did when Li Bai danced. God remains when sobriety returns, when illusions fall away, when silence settles in.
Old age can feel like standing beneath a vast sky, speaking words that no one seems to hear. Yet Scripture reminds us that even then—especially then—our prayer rises into attentive mercy.
Drinking Alone Beneath the Moon
月下独酌
(pinyin: Yuè xià dú zhuó)
li Bai’s original poem is in the public domain, having been written in the eighth century. This English rendering of the stanza is newly translated by ChatGpt from Chinese and is not a restricted. Check poetry websites for modern English translations.
Image by Copilot