Classic Poem

The Milky Way's silver river
suddenly has burst
and spilled as if from a cracked gourd
below Five Elders' Peak.
I think the Heavenly Weaving Bird
has woven pure white silk,
white silk which has unfurled from the spool
to hang free in blue sky!
And so I want to take in hand
a scissor from Ping-chou
and cut myself a section of this glassy, misty sheen.
But I run into Master Cloud Rock,
a man like the Immortal who clutched the moon!
His throat craved wine, he could not bear
the nighttime thirst,
so he mounted a whale to drink the ocean,
drying it down to the mulberry-field bed!
And then it stretched out to a hundred thousand feet
of jade rainbow plunging to the pure abyss below!