A jug of wine among the flowers, I drink alone with no companion. Raising my cup, I invite the bright moon, and along with my shadow, we become three.

Li Bai, the great drunken poet of the Tang Dynasty, was perhaps the most brilliant alcoholic in history. He claimed to have written ten thousand poems, most of them under the influence of wine and moonlight.

In this poem, the moon is his drinking partner, his shadow his dancing companion. The three of them — poet, moon, shadow — form a temporary fellowship against the great loneliness of existence.

But at the end, the moon cannot drink, and the shadow merely mimics. Li Bai accepts this: 'Let us pledge friendship while we can, then scatter like the stars of the Milky Way.' The poem is a toast to impermanence.