Listening to a Flute in Yellow Crane Pavilion

A poem forwarded today by a friend from the poetry program. He did not forward it to me particularly -- I'm not even sure he knows I'm going to China. But it strikes the right note.

Listening to a Flute in Yellow Crane Pavilion

I came here as a wanderer
thinking of home,
remembering my faraway Ch'ang-an.
And then, from deep in Yellow Crane Pavilion,
I heard a beautiful bamboo flute
play "Falling Plum Blossoms."
It was late summer in a city by the river.

--Li Po